Historic changes and challenges. Breakthroughs in human knowledge and opportunity. And yet for vast numbers across the globe the daily realities have not altered.

It becomes a giant's task to compute the result when the effect of cross seas wind at all angles and ever varying force arched surfaces head resistance ratio of weight to area and the intelligence of the guiding power crop up.

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.

You know as director of the CIA I got an awful lot of intelligence about all the horrible things that could go on across the world.

Emotion is often what we rely upon to carry us across the unfathomable voids in our intelligence.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

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.

And you know whether it's drama or comedy the best work is based on truth. It's just that with comedy the circumstances are just crazy-heightened and you have these crazy things thrown at you. But you still have to do it truthfully because that's where the humor comes from. So it's not that difficult to cross over.

We have a certain warped sense of humor in Scandinavia and that is what comes across in the choices in a lot of our movies.

But because it was able to balance that kind of humor with a sweet story and characters you really rooted for and also got across the girls' point of view I've heard nothing but great things from younger and older females as well.

I think the Canadian sense of humor is dryer than America's and juicier than Britain's. I think it's a cross between the two of them really.

I try to bring it across on my record in my dress in what I do and what I say because to me humor is important. You should have a dose of that and I guess giving it is what I'm here for.

I tried to go out for theater or theater arts but I was too scared or too intimidated. But I had a lot of friends on the cross country team that had great senses of humor.

As I travel across the country speaking about MS perhaps I can offer others comfort and hope.

I've flown across America I've scaled fences I've stood under windows and gone out of my way hundreds of times. I'm a hopeless romantic. There's no hope for me.

My hope is that 10 years from now after I've been across the street at work for a while they'll all be glad they gave me that wonderful vote.

For me Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

Hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed and delivering justice to the violent they are making America more secure.

Oh stuff the critics. I don't care. Too many people are snooty about classical. Look I wasn't brought up in a home where we listened to classical music. It was a singing teacher that thought it would be best for my voice. Then I moved into crossover. And if that makes the music accessible to more people then great.

But let me tell you this gender thing is history. You're looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues.

If I were beginning my career today I don't think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about natural history by means other than television and I think if I were beginning today I'd be there.

When the rose and the cross are united the alchemical marriage is complete and the drama ends. Then we wake from history and enter eternity.

I know that many of you do wear such a cross of Christ not in any ostentatious way not in a way that might harm you at your work or recreation but a simple indication that you value the role of Jesus Christ in the history of the world that you are trying to live by Christ's standards in your own daily life.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'