An artist's job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It's not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.
The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer.
I have held the following jobs: office temp, ticket seller in movie theatre, cook in restaurant, nanny, and phone installer at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
People have to feel needed. Frequently, we just offer a job and 'perks.' We don't always offer people a purpose. When people feel there is a purpose and that they're needed, there's not much else to do except let them do the work.
Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race.
I believe that marriage has served society well, and I believe it is important to affirm that, that marriage between a man and a woman is the ideal. And the job of the President is to drive policy toward the ideal.
Scientists make mistakes. Accordingly, it is the job of the scientist to recognize our weakness, to examine the widest range of opinions, to be ruthlessly self-critical. Science is a collective enterprise with the error-correction machinery often running smoothly.
All of the factors that make up a quality city - safe streets, high paying jobs, strong neighborhoods, etc. - emanate from a strong educational premise.
I think raising wages, investing in infrastructure, making sure that people have access to good educations that equip them for the jobs of the future. Those are all agenda items that would help alleviate some of those economic pressures and dislocations that people are experiencing. The problem was I couldn't convince the Republican Congress to pass a lot of them.
I would say this, I'll go back to those black ladies I was talking about who love them some Barack and love Michelle even more - and by the way, they are not middle-aged anymore, because I'm now middle-aged. So they're a little bit older. As fervent as they were, as excited and happy as they were when I was elected, they had to go to work the next morning. They still had trouble paying those bills. They might have still had a son who was in trouble with the law or couldn't get a job because of a felony record. They didn't stop being grounded.