In this business, if you take too long, the landscape changes. So the opportunities that were there when I decided to take a break weren't there when I came back. It's like, 'Wait a second - what happened here?' It was a real learning experience. I've paid my dues, I will tell you that.

The only time it got really crazy was during 'Batman.' Anywhere I went in the world, people knew who I was. I was being offered these huge films that would have taken my career to a different level, and I decided to put on the brakes. I knew if I continued on that track, I probably wouldn't have gotten married.

There are obviously peaks and valleys in everyone's career. This business can be a roller-coaster ride, and it's really hard to stay on top all the time. Very few people do.

I'm definitely the most tech-savvy in my family. My wife wouldn't have a clue, as far as getting the computer working. All of my kids, it's amazing. Like everybody's kids, they're more savvy than I am, probably.

The corporate right fires up the religious right against gay marriage and abortion and uses their votes to push their deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It's an old trick. The House of Saud has the same arrangement with the Mullahs in Saudi Arabia.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

E. B. White had a romantic tenderness toward nature in a capital R, 19th-century way. He was knowledgeable, a part-time farmer, and a hardheaded realistic person.

But sweetly and discreetly love passes from person to person, from heart to heart, or it is nothing worth.