Christmas can have a real melancholy aspect 'cause it packages itself as this idea of perfect family cohesion and love and you're always going to come up short when you measure your personal life against the idealized personal lives that are constantly thrust in our faces primarily by TV commercials.

I think every chef not just in America but across the world has a double-edged sword - two jackets one that's driven a self-confessed perfectionist thoroughbred hate incompetence and switch off the stove take off the jacket and become a family man.

Where would you be without friends? The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends - your own chosen family. There's nothing like a really loyal dependable good friend. Nothing.

But let me perfectly clear because I know you'll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250 000 a year you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.

Do not fear lest you should meditate too much upon Him and speak of Him in an unworthy way providing you are led by faith. Do not fear lest you should entertain false opinions of Him so long as they are in conformity with the notion of the infinitely perfect Being.

In times when religious or political faith or hope predominates the writer functions totally in unison with society and expresses society's feelings beliefs and hopes in perfect harmony.

When Christians start thinking about Jesus things start breaking down they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ the very linchpin of their religion.

Practice means to perform over and over again in the face of all obstacles some act of vision of faith of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise than he was 6000 years ago.

So the poet who wants to be something that he cannot be and is a failure in plain life makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.

Success is the result of perfection hard work learning from failure loyalty and persistence.

And then I went to 'Dawson's Creek ' which is a show that was for better or for worse all about the language. It was a word-perfect show which I'd never had any experience with. And it was really shocking for me. I felt really hemmed in. At the time it wasn't my favorite working experience.

If you're working on a movie you want it to be projected on the largest tapestry possible and the sound to be perfect and for that kind of communal experience of the movies to take place for it.

My kids will grow up in a house knowing that it's perfectly normal for two men to be in love it's perfectly normal for two women to be in love. My kids will grow up knowing it's all about love. It doesn't matter who you're with and everyone should have that experience.

For me titles are either a natural two-second experience or stressful enough to give you an ulcer. If they don't pop out perfect on the first try they can be really hard to repair. Or worse if the author thinks they pop out perfect but the publishing house does not agree it's difficult to shift gears. And then? Then you go insane.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

I made decisions that I regret and I took them as learning experiences... I'm human not perfect like anybody else.