You build on failure. You use it as a stepping sto...

I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.

My father was a man of love. He always loved me to death. He worked hard in the fields, but my father never hit me. Never. I don't ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father.

Of emotions, of love, of breakup, of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does.

I don't feel old. I don't feel anything till noon. That's when it's time for my nap.

It takes a long time to become young.

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.

Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week.

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn't have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don't be afraid to fail.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it.

So I won an Oscar. It's amazing. I've got that for the rest of my life for a performance I am proud of. It nearly killed me. I am really proud of the film. That's it, moving on.

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.

The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on, and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away, that's when this stuff comes.