I haven't lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that's from a lifetime of taking chances making decisions and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

I'm not one of those complicated mixed-up cats. I'm not looking for the secret to life... I just go on from day to day taking what comes.

Success comes from taking the initiative and following up... persisting... eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?

I'm thinking about learning a few new things - like taking classical guitar lessons - and I'd like to bring what I learn into hard rock.

Children don't just play any more - they're far too busy learning to fence and taking extra French classes. In the end you're actually doing more damage to your children by trying to hot-house them. It's far better to remain a calm parent.

I always loved the idea of learning martial arts but it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I really started doing it and taking up karate.

But by taking the time away getting myself off the treadmill and just slowing down and learning I felt I had so much more to give back. And maybe that was something that needed to happen for all of us.

I met a lot of young girls modelling and they were like 'Oh I'm running around town and people are taking my picture' while I was saving receipts and learning how to be self-employed.

I was a kid and I wasn't even sure if I wanted to play the drums you know? All I wanted to do was skateboard but I was still learning and taking it in so it was good.

I enjoy learning about different periods and people and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are certain things unite everybody.

Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama learning the literature on evolution what was known about it biologically just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular scientific view of the world.

The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

I've been the co-chair of the Non-Partisan Women's Caucus and vice-chair for several years taking a leadership role in this women's organization.

Among my activities was membership in the Boy Scouts I rose each year through the ranks eventually achieving the rank of Eagle Scout and undertaking leadership roles in the organization.

The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half.

Sometimes leadership is planting trees under whose shade you'll never sit. It may not happen fully till after I'm gone. But I know that the steps we're taking are the right steps.

Leadership - leadership is about taking responsibility not making excuses.

During the Cold War we gathered information by listening to the Soviets taking pictures of the Soviets and we allowed our human intelligence to decline.

But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.

The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known using that as scaffolding and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end the comic's best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he's doing is easy is an occupational hazard.