Has Bill Clinton inspired idealism in the young as he himself was inspired by John F. Kennedy? Or has he actually reduced their idealism? Surely part of the answer lies in Clinton's personal moral lapse with Monica Lewinsky. But more important was his sin of omission - his failure to embrace a moral cause beyond popularity.

The vast majority of large scale change efforts fail. Which means that the probability that you have actually experienced a failure and your people know that and are pessimistic therefore about trying something again is very high.

We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States.

So I try not to have any actual expectations for myself for any level of success or failure.

There would seem to be a limit even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure a mere experimentation.

One must never assume that a character is sympathetic because of either the actor playing them or the fact that they're a lead. I think that's a recipe for failure actually because if they become unsympathetic you lose your audience.

I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.

And actually about three weeks ago Micky Peter and I were in Vegas at the MGM Grand. And we did about 12 shows in seven days. It was quite an experience.

Music and language are a vital element. We as actors and directors offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

Well I stopped drinking. That was actually a big deal. I didn't go through any harrowing rock-bottom experience. I just made a decision to stop drinking.

The experience gathered from books though often valuable is but the nature of learning whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Actually music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello which is a different experience you're flexing a different muscle but it's beautiful because it is music.

I find increasingly that the more extreme are the things going on in your life the more cultural reference points fail you. More mythical reference points actually help and you realise that's what myths are for. It's for human beings to process their experience in extremis.

As with real reading the ability to comprehend subtlety and complexity comes only with time and a lot of experience. If you don't adequately acquire those skills moving out into the real world of real people can actually become quite scary.

No matter how close to personal experience a story might be inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and actually whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself and your imagination and experience but actually in the end you're not playing yourself.