They [terrorists] are trying to evoke sympathy for themselves. They're not sympathetic people. They're violent, cold-blooded killers who are trying to stop the advance of freedom.
But I've been there and done that. I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody, and if somebody wants me to come, if they can afford what I ask, it's not as much as Madonna makes; not that I want what Madonna makes, but I was saying.
If the door has been opened and I've been invited, or if I'm not invited and I somehow know I'm supposed to go in there, I put myself together and go in, praying all the while. I try to learn something before I go in. I try to show some respect of the place I'm going into.
As soon as I wake up I pay homage to the Buddha, and I try to prepare my mind to be more altruistic, more compassionate, during the day to come so I can be of benefit to beings. Then I do physical exersice - I walk on a treadmill.
Courage and willingness to just go for it, whether it is a conversation or a spontaneous trip or trying new things that are scary - it is a really attractive quality.
Religions, creeds and forms are only a characteristic outward sign of the spiritual impulsion and religion itself is the intensive action by which it tries to find its inward force. Its expansive movement comes in the thought which it throws out on life, the ideals which open up new horizons and which the intellect accepts and life labours to assimilate.
Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension.
And I am an optimistic person. I guess if you want to try to find something to be pessimistic about, you can find it, no matter how hard you look, you know?
The unknown is not measurable by the known. Time cannot measure the timeless, the eternal, that immensity which has no beginning and no end... when we try to measure something which is not measurable, we only get caught in words.
I've been trying to tame our press corps ever since I got into politics, and I've failed miserably. They get to express their opinions sometimes in the form of news.
Above all, in order to gain respect, you need to be true to yourself. There is no point in trying to be brutal if it's not in your nature; there is no point in trying to be suave and sophisticated if it doesn't come naturally.