I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

The solid middle-class values of hard work responsibility family community and faith my father talked about tirelessly from Iowa to New York he lived at home. The hopes he had for his family and for me he had for all Americans. I think Americans understood this.

I grew up in a very religious family and it is the motivating force to every thing I do. I am fortunate to have had adults all around me who really lived their faith in helping other people and doing the best you can do.

And in reality I don't think it's a real documentary. It's more a story of her life. It's a story of survival. It's a story of the time in which she lived. The story of success and failure.

It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might has well not have lived at all in which case you have failed by default.

I would vote for the man who's lived life who's done different occupations who's been out in the real world and struggled to make a living struggled to raise a family struggled with life as it exists. So I'd vote for experience honest experience.

When I'm writing I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived you know?

I'd like to work with Justin Bieber. He's talented and he's so young. I know what he's going through. I've lived what he's living through right now. Working with him would complete a circle of sorts for me. And he might find it a worthwhile experience himself.

No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

Sometimes when we weep in the movies we weep for ourselves or for a life unlived. Or we even go to the movies because we want to resist the emotion that's there in front of us. I think there is always a catharsis that I look for and that makes the movie experience worthwhile.

Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.

The people in Iraq lived essentially good lives. They had brilliant health and education systems. Saddam actually created an incredible infrastructure in a very difficult country but they were a Mafia family. If you said anything against that regime or that family you would be killed instantly.

My grandmother lived to be 100 years old. Her grandmother was a slave yet she was a college graduate in the Spellman class of 1917. She taught art for 50 years and she saved her Social Security checks for her children's education.

I was always someone who lived in the future all the time it was always the next thing - dreams of escape.

I've never been bashful to say that I'm not really interested in Formula One. When I lived in England it's all I wanted to do and I thought that anything else would somehow be a compromise to my dreams. But then when I came back to the States I realised how much I loved being back in the States.

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22 1963 the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.

A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one's own path not chasing after the dreams of others.

For four to six months at a time I would barely eat. I lived on a diet of Melba toast carrots and black coffee.

I have lived with my husband more than I have with my parents... I live beside him and know his worries his hopes and his dreams for his nation. We believe that things happen by design not in an arbitrary way. And we believe it is our duty to make things happen.

I do what I love to do at the moment. If I wake up tomorrow and decide I want to dance that's what I'd do. Or design clothes. I think I'd throw myself into whatever I'm doing now. It's not about abandoning what I was doing before or giving up. It's about knowing that if I die tomorrow I lived the way I wanted to.

So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died I felt like I had lost a limb.

There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries too. Wright lived into his 90s and one of his most famous buildings the Guggenheim Museum in New York was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox.

My mother was the sweetest lady who ever lived on this planet but if you tried to tell her that Jesus wasn't a Christian she would stomp you to death.