The Middle East is ailing. The malady stems from pervasive violence shortages of food water and educational opportunities discrimination against women and - the most virulent cause of all - the absence of freedom.

The confidence is really driven by the woman - whether she can have the confidence that there will be enough earning or income to finance all the domestic spending - but also by the middle-income class which for many Asian countries has become the growth power for the economy.

I fear dying in the middle of a book. It would be so annoying to write 80 000 words and not get to the end. I'm phobic about it. So when I'm writing a book I leave messages all over the house for people to know how the story ends and then someone can finish it for me.

I don't think that anyone seriously fears that the world can be blown to pieces all together. But what one can fear and rightly so are regional things like in the Middle East India Pakistan the Korean Peninsula borders in Africa etc.

I had to do this very aggressive big score in a very short time and knowing that in the beginning middle and end would be this very very famous theme but I still had to weave a score around it and make it work as a score was really challenging.

I know I have this level of celebrity of fame international national whatever you want to call it but it's a pretty surreal thing to think sometimes that you're in the middle of another famous person's life and you think to yourself 'How the hell did I get famous? What is this some weird club that we're in?'

I'm just a public-schoolboy. I've got a degree. I'm from a middle-class family in Devon. I've got no story.

You have no idea how humiliating it was as a boy to suddenly have all your clothes your toys snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed I felt dirty.

I think and I mean this sincerely I was raised humbly. We were a lower middle income family and a household that was scrimping by at times. We were watching the dollar stretching the dollar and coupons. It was all those things.

I'm from a nice suburban middle-class family but my tattoos remind me where I've been.

Like a lot of you I grew up in a family on the ragged edges of the middle class. My daddy sold carpeting and ended up as a maintenance man. After he had a heart attack my mom worked the phones at Sears so we could hang on to our house.

In the family sandwich the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are for a time the meat.

You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage as I like to put it and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.

I'm from a lower middle class background all my family were immigrants.

In the richest country in the history of the world this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4 0 but health insurance premiums are higher food prices are higher utility bills are higher and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before.

It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week the minimum wage family leave health insurance Social Security Medicare retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.

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.

You know this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith is a good notion but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.

There is no middle ground in Hollywood you're a failure or you're a success. That mentality is wild.

You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration of feudalism and tribalism.

I know from my own personal experience. I was bullied in middle school and high school and went through my fair share of hard times thereafter. Also one of my really good friends committed suicide when I was in high school.

Whenever something happens that makes me laugh or if I remember something in the middle of the night that I want to share I jot the experience down.

For 25 years it has been my privilege to represent the city of San Francisco and the great state of California to work to strengthen our vibrant middle class to secure opportunity and equality.

We face a choice this election. President Obama is fighting for changes that grow the economy from the middle out and help all Americans succeed - jobs education health reform the DREAM Act equal pay for women. He is moving us forward with opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow. Mitt Romney wants to take us back to yesterday.