People feel uncomfortable talking about racial issues out of fear that if they express things they will be characterized in a way that's not fair. I think that there is still a need for a dialogue about things racial that we've not engaged in.

I say let's go back to a truer use of the word 'freedom.' Let's start with President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression freedom of worship freedom from want and freedom from fear. I would add the freedom to bargain collectively. Those freedoms are under attack today.

President Obama's 100-day plan is pretty impressive. I think it's a Wow 100-plus days. The administration is not operating from fear it is trying to drive change for the future and that's a good thing.

Going to parties usually makes me feel depressed just because I have such social fear after meeting people.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

Yet it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love lust longing joy rage fear triumph yearning and confusion.

Dictators and oppressors should continue to fear me because I will be here for a long time.

The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them.

A peace that depends on fear is nothing but a suppressed war.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

What is needed rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance is understanding fear that means watch it learn about it come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear not how to escape from it.

Of course Hollywood is still making some excellent pictures which reflect the great artistry that made Hollywood famous throughout the world but these films are exceptions judging from box office returns and press reviews.

I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings but I think they are a little puzzled by this.

I did grow up next door to Steve McQueen who was a very famous movie star at the time but as a kid it didn't impress me. We always had great fun with him. He would take us out on Sundays on his motorcycles riding around in the desert he was like a second father.

I'm just not a private person. It's not like I do things because I want things to be public it's just that's my way of expressing myself and I happen to be very famous.

There's such big pressure on people who are incredibly famous on those who have people sitting outside their front door and taking photos every time they move.

Being rich and famous isn't all happiness and at times the pressures have got to me.

There's always going to be that pressure when you're in front of the camera. When you're famous it's just an extreme version of reality and there's a pressure to look a certain way.

I never feel so utterly fraudulent as when I review a movie whose charms impress all in the world and I simply do not get it. The other variant is that I love something the world disdains. This has had severe career consequences: I am still famous - or notorious - in certain quarters where I am recalled as the man who liked 'Hudson Hawk.'

I felt no pressure that my grandfather was famous and my uncle was famous.

There's the famous thing that the A&R man from the record company is supposed to do: He's supposed to come into the studio and listen to the songs you've been recording and then say 'Guys I don't hear any singles.' And then everybody falls into a terrible depression because you have to write one.

The press attack people to sell more papers without thinking but when you get famous you have to put up with this kind of stuff.

There is less pressure as a character actor. It generally means that you will be acting for all of your life which is my intention. It is not my intention to just be a rich and famous person that would be pretty boring.