If you look back today over the last 25 years it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general in particular in the field of human intelligence.

Over the course of two years we arrived at a point where we began to look at the value added by making information more easily accessible across the intelligence community both defense and national.

We have been working hard to think about what our combined needs are going to be in the way of intelligence capabilities not today but 15 to 20 years in the future.

When a decision is made to go to war based on intelligence it is a fateful decision. It has ramifications and impacts way beyond the current months and years.

Within thirty years we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

I have had national security background 10 years on the Intelligence Committee the last two years as chair.

Emotional intelligence begins to develop in the earliest years. All the small exchanges children have with their parents teachers and with each other carry emotional messages.

We will have to continue to improve our human intelligence system-something that was unfortunately lacking in the years which led up to September 11. This is going to be a continuing process of change.

Since we launched the original 'Pop Idol' in England I've remained close with Simon Fuller. Working as executive producer on 'American idol' for its first seven years not only was an inspirational journey into the heart of American pop culture it opened my eyes to the untapped potential of the incredibly dynamic young people in this world.

Imagination! Imagination! I put it first years ago when I was asked what qualities I thought necessary for success on the stage.

Now I'm a failed political consultant. But sometimes fiction has a way of capturing people's imagination in a way that non-fiction doesn't. Conservatives typically haven't written much fiction - specifically political thrillers - over the years to educate inspire and mobilize people on issues of great import but we ought to.

Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories the streets the cathedrals of the imagination.

With the world as it now presents itself there is something perverse and probably dysfunctional about a person who stays in the same house for 40 years. What about the expanding family syndrome the school-lottery migration the property portfolio neurosis? Have you no imagination?

No film has captivated my imagination more than 'King Kong.' I'm making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old.

We didn't have television until I was about eight years old so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things and the comics that I immersed myself in as a child.

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

In my imagination yes I remember when I was six years old I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it's real.

Just about this time when in imagination I was so great a warrior I had good use in real life for more strength as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse but instead had myself to protect my brother two years my junior.

I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you the only limit is the imagination.

Another side to me is this very sexual being. When I look back on my life it's always been there. It's been there since I was 10 years old having the imagination that I had.

I was a precocious only child and then I went through a fat awkward stage for several years so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive so I think it was more of a natural progression for me developing into comedy.

I've always chosen my band members based on their sense of humor. It might sound stupid but it means not only are they fun to live with on a tour bus for years but humor implies intelligence.

Sometimes it takes ten seconds to see some humor in your dilemmas sometimes ten years.

Those years on the golf course as a caddie boy those people were something. They were vulgar some were alcoholics racist they were very difficult people to deal with. A lot of them didn't have a sense of humor.