No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks they are the summits of ranges.

When I was a kid my father didn't really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer he didn't think I would amount to anything. My mother also.

I exercise about 40 minutes a day and I'll run one day and do circuit training the next day. I live in an area where there are brilliant hills and mountains so I get a good hill run with my dog. At home I'll do the circuit training with old weights along with pull-ups in the trees and that sort of stuff.

I met a lot of great people in Saudi Arabia and I'd like to see them again. And I'd love to spend more time in the desert and in the mountains. I felt really at home there.

I grew up in an abusive home and was told on a daily basis by my father that I would never amount to anything and that I looked like a boy.

Snowboarding's tough because you've got to go to the mountains. For me I love the skateboard season because I get to hangout at home and still be skating. I don't have to travel to Norway or Japan or these crazy places to be snowboarding.

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes then it's historical. Then ask 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes then it's history if the answer is no not precisely this way then it's historical drama.

I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

The greater the difficulty the more the glory in surmounting it.

In mid-May the House of Representatives approved the full amount of money that the Veterans Administration said was needed for next year - plus an additional $1 billion increase for veterans' health care.

You bet every member of Congress who votes for this bill ought to read it read it thoroughly and understand that what we're looking at here amounts to nothing more than a government takeover of our health care economy paid for with nearly a trillion dollars in new taxes on individuals and small businesses. And it must be opposed.

For the amount of money that the country is going to spend this year on health care you can go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the US and pay the doctor almost $230 000 a year to cover them.

And I believe that if we can care about whether or not our neighbor has a good job or access to affordable health care for their children and we move to implement the policies that can improve these situations we will unleash vast amounts of human potential and recapture the American spirit.

Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater as well as accidental spills can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.

What I mean by that is that the point of life as I see it is not to write books or scale mountains or sail oceans but to achieve happiness and preferably an unselfish happiness.