The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair basically a chore. Buy mother a book dad a new tie my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

To me as long as we've known each other I've always thought Mick's most brilliant thing was that he could work in an area two foot square and give a very exciting performance.

The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure of classified information. It puts people's lives in danger threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.

There's always a miasma of misinformation emerging from the higher education sector as to which are the 'best' courses to take. My advice would always be to ignore the perceived wisdom and look for the most reliable evidence on the ground.

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

All the information you could want is constantly streaming at you like a runaway truck - books newspaper stories Web sites apps how-to videos this article you're reading even entire magazines devoted to single subjects like charcuterie or wedding cakes or pickles.

I've never crashed a wedding. When I was a kid I of course used to crash parties. Crashing a wedding is difficult though because you have to have the suit and you have to have information in case someone catches you. You have to know at least some names and something.

I frankly don't think it's going to be a successful war on terrorism until law enforcement agencies like the FBI are willing to share with other law enforcement agencies. If they can't share information there's no way this war can be won.

The main thing I say on war is that we need to obey the law and formally declare war.

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi raise aphids as livestock launch armies into war use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies capture slaves engage in child labour exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terrorism have reduced the pace of military transformation and have revealed our lack of preparation for defensive and stability operations. This Administration has overextended our military.

The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information misinformation disinformation and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

I was telling somebody just the other day there's technically such a hierarchy in this business. You have film that's the ideal then you have TV and things like web series do not claim as much cred but the fact is if the material is solid and I believe and trust in the team that's involved I don't care what format it is.

If you are a reliable honest journalist sources will open up and trust you and share good information.

As a historian what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

Well the whole story is in the book but the short answer is that I was the first information architect in an organization that was traditionally design-oriented and I felt I needed a tool to help me gain the trust and support of my colleagues.

A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences.

That's how you get a performance - they put trust in you.

I worked with creative people who were very demanding of me and they helped me reach performances that I never could have gotten on my own without being pushed and having trust in them. And so I know the best way to get the best performance of an actor and that's not to coddle them or to baby them. It's to help them it's to push them.

When you're told to go brief a United States senator on a covert operation you go do it. And you trust the information isn't going to leak.

I had this totally impossible dream of being an actress. Trust me just because I'm lucky enough to be doing this doesn't make any of this less of a pipe dream. And nothing gets my juices flowing like a really great performance. To see someone on stage I get really excited.

Some directors cast you because they trust you to do the performance - but then they forget to direct you.

The cyberspace earnings I get from Linux come in the format of having a Network of people that know me and trust me and that I can depend on in return.

A good athlete always mentally replays a competition over and over even in victory to see what might be done to improve the performance the next time.