This week the world gathers in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games. This is the extraordinary moment China has been dreaming of for 100 years. People have been longing for this moment because it symbolises a turning point in China's relationship with the outside world.

It's like a garden: Whatever you water the most will do the best. At some point you decide whether you'll water your career or your relationship more.

You know we're each the hero of our own story and we perceive what's going on around us and especially in a relationship from the kind of viewpoint of 'Well this is my story and I'm the hero of that and I justify what I do around it.'

I wanted very much to do Traffic and at one point it looked like I was going to work on it. And then of course Catherine Zeta-Jones had her relationship with Michael Douglas and it suddenly didn't happen.

I think every relationship has a point where you stop and reevaluate. Are you happy? Have you grown together or apart? What do you share interests in? I think that's a normal thing to do but it's so much harder when it's done publicly.

There's an entry point to any relationship.

I have my ethics and morals. I have my anchor point of what is right and wrong in real life but I'm not afraid to entertain any and every aspect of personality in relationship to creating a character.

Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship - and not as ends in themselves.

Life is suffering. Life is not resistance to suffering. The point of life is to suffer. This is why we're here: We're here to suffer. I believe in a higher power that compassionately allows suffering for us as a race to grow and mature.

I consider 'Dr. Horrible' a tremendous success. The fact that it won an Emmy I just think lends validity to what we were doing and the point we were trying to make: taking the power into someone else's hands and changing the world.

It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power.

Kids now are so used to surround sound and the power in theater speakers that the concert hall is a disappointment to them.

I think that if your approach is one where you don't want to alienate anybody you're going to have to soften the viewpoint or the information that you're offering to such an extent that it doesn't have the power to make any difference. You have to take that risk.

The point of power is always in the present moment.

What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely. From an acting point of view that's how I approached the part.

If one can stick to the training throughout the many long years then will power is no longer a problem. It's raining? That doesn't matter. I am tired? That's besides the point. It's simply that I just have to.

All the idols made by man however terrifying they may be are in point of fact subordinate to him and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.