I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood who were funny without swearing were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.

I loved my 17 years with R.E.M. but I'm ready to reflect assess and move on to a different phase of my life. The four of us will continue our close friendship and I look forward to hearing their future efforts as the world's biggest R.E.M. fan.

China has not established the rule of law and if there is a power above the law there is no social justice. Everybody can be subjected to harm. I'm just a citizen: my life is equal in value to any other. But I'm thankful that when I lost my freedom so many people shared feelings and put such touching effort into helping me.

Every American deserves to live in freedom to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race gender ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Freedom requires no effort to enjoy but requires heroic efforts to preserve.

Most men after a little freedom have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it.

Well first let me say that I think health care reform is important. It has to be a priority. And our system is broken. The Finance Committee bill is the best effort yet due in large measure to the efforts of my colleague Olympia Snowe but it's not there yet. It falls short.

There's enormous progressive activism and more often than not success at the grassroots level - everything from living wage campaigns to efforts to finance our elections are having terrific success.

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.

Short of baseball and my family it was gaming. And gaming is a $20-million to $200-million multi-year effort. It's an insane stupid and utterly irresponsible act. But I did it.

My wife is so analytical with raising kids and I am not. My feeling is if they turn out good then that means I was a good daddy and put a lot of effort into it. If they turn out bad it means they took after her side of the family.

No doubt the White House thinks the American people know Obama's story. But since the Inauguration we've seen only the president's present: his perfect family his Ivy League elegance his effortless mastery of complex issues. We never see him sweat. And we forget that he ever had to struggle.

In light of these facts Republicans have put forth a variety of proposals to make Social Security remain solvent for future generations. But up to this point Democrats have chosen to oppose our good faith efforts and insist that indeed there is no problem.

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement without limit.

Remember the sufferings of Christ the storms that were weathered... the crown that came from those sufferings which gave new radiance to the faith... All saints give testimony to the truth that without real effort no one ever wins the crown.

What I think is fair to say is that coming out of the Republican camp there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith - something which I find deeply offensive and that has been going on for a pretty long time.

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains the waste remains and kills.

The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement.

The vast majority of large scale change efforts fail. Which means that the probability that you have actually experienced a failure and your people know that and are pessimistic therefore about trying something again is very high.

I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.

As efforts to fix this failure at the Veterans Administration continue I also intend to persist in demanding answers and action on the establishment of a new clinic to serve the veterans in North Central Washington.