In order to represent life on the stage, we must rub elbows with life, live ourselves.

By the time we've hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons.

By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons. We have found out that only a few things are really important. We have learned to take life seriously, but never ourselves.

No vice is so bad as advice.

Mothers are so awesome. They do so much. They wear so many hats and have very passionate relationships with their kids, and with life, and I think it's a real balance having your own existence and then being this responsible, kind of loving person in someone else's life or several other people's lives.

I realize how much my life lines up with artists like Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. My sound comes from church, but the stories come from actual personal experience, being out there in the streets living life.

I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.

We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.