Quotes About Engagement

We want to get people of color out to vote, because their vote matters. Every politician tries to capture it. But it's More Than a Vote because we want to come up with what's our ask, and hold these politicians' feet to the fire to make real change.

I'm ready for whatever D.C. can throw at me. But if he stands there and tries to dish with me, be my guest.

Im hoping that for film actors there is this kind of emotional trigger on any subject. It need not be only slums. It can be anything. But even if it is tentative, sooner or later, it will - by its sheer force - engulf you in a way where you make a commitment and you get involved in it, beyond just making it an image-building exercise.

Great advertising triggers an emotion in you. It has purpose. It touches a nerve, and that provokes a reaction.

I use these senses - touch, sight, feel and smell - as triggers that invite readers or propel them into the scene. The trick is not to make it obvious. I've written an entire chapter about this in my book, 'The Successful Novelist.' I've lectured about it extensively, but have yet to see many people pick up on it.

I never plan my speech. Very often the audience triggers me into the mood.

Being away a lot on tour means that my family has to suffer an inordinate amount of overcompensation, as I return home with skewed ideas of what counts as quality time. I will force everyone into a cinema trip, insistent that three hours in the dark in silence is the perfect way for us all to re-engage.

Everybody goes through a lot of the same things, and I talk about those, and that's the key. You have to connect with your audience, and I might take them on a trip with me, tell them I went here and I went there and they'll go with me, you know, to hear the stories.

If you really want to help make a difference while getting a true travel experience, consider a community-run trip.

Strange questions are the more interesting ones. Children by and large don't try to trip you up... they want to find out how you do this funny thing that you do... if they've loved a story they love to know how it started.

I try to make my schedule around parent-teacher conferences, school plays, and school trips.

Oh, you know. I am secretary of state. My trips aren't successful. I just talk to people.

Working in TV, we're in people's living rooms, and everyone has a different relationship to it than with movies. You're there every week; they feel like they know you. They call you by name, and it trips you up.

It sounds so trite to say I make a difference, but I really feel, especially in a community college, I can make a difference.

When you first start photographing a show or being into photography, you might think it's cool to see people with their phones, like, 'It's so novel; everyone cares about this moment so much,' but then it becomes... trite, y'know, and shallow. I think the best moments of my life have been spent without phones.

The important thing in life is not to triumph but to compete.

Whether you like it or not, a performance's triumphs and belly flops come to seem excruciatingly intimate, as if you were somehow partly responsible for them.

The desire to hear a story, and a story well told, triumphs over Internet, film and television sometimes.

Whenever we can, we try to talk to students. If I can, I'll invite kids from a school to a sound check and take questions from them. I want to show them it's cool to play the trombone. Kids are influenced by what's accessible to them. It's hard for kids to be introduced to music other than what they see on TV and video.

I found that if I got up on the stage to entertain the troops I could make them shut up and look.

During a time of war, we ask our troops to give their best even to the point of sacrificing their own lives. When compared against that, how much of a sacrifice is it for a president to engage in a possibly contentious debate with Congress about whether military action is a good idea?

We want to support our troops because they didn't make the decision to go there... but I don't think it should be open-ended. We ought to have a benchmark where the administration has to come back and give us a report.

And across Afghanistan, every single day, Afghan soldiers, Afghan police and ISAF troops are serving shoulder-to-shoulder in some very difficult situations. And our engagement with them, our shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with them, our conduct of operations with them every single day defines the real relationship.

Far from being aberrant and un-British, criticising a war in which our troops are actively engaged is a long-established parliamentary and political tradition.