When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music.

Growing up in Connecticut, all the Colonial houses looked alike. In Los Angeles, the diversity is so extreme, it's baffling.

When I was growing up, albums were my closest friends, as sad as that may sound - Joy Division's 'Closer,' or Echo and the Bunnymen's 'Heaven Up Here'... I had a more intimate relationship with those records than I did with most of the people in my life.

If you care about women's rights, you can't not vote.

I'm very interested in the more grass-roots consequences of the economic meltdown: issues related to mortgage foreclosures, debt collection, and the practices of credit card companies and others who hold a lot of consumer debt.

Real estate investing, even on a very small scale, remains a tried and true means of building an individual's cash flow and wealth.

People want me to be so full of shame that I used to dance. I would never be ashamed of it. I made a lot of money. I had a good time, and it showed me a lot.

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve.