Texas Monthly Talks
Conversations with the state's most interesting personalities.
“There are some places where it wouldn’t matter if Pope Benedict XVI was winning the Tour. They would kill him. They would say he cheats, he steals, he has sex with little boys.”
“War is always a great reinforcer of secrecy, but a war on terror is the most insidious threat to opennessyou can always claim, without having to explain why, that something can't be public.”
“Billy can go to a 7-Eleven and buy a soft drink and must pay sales tax, but Billy goes to school, buys a soft drink, and pays no sales tax.”
“We’re a real NFL football team, and we can go out and make plays. We have talent. We can beat teams. It’s not a fluke if we beat the Cowboys.”
“I like to go out at night. I like to sit in a nice room and look at beautiful women. I don't want to just sit on my back porch drinking scotch, and there isn’t much more
to do in Archer City.”
“You can’t make all of TV and movies kid-safe. If you do,
we’re all going to be watching the Care Bears. I think there should be things that are just for adults.”
“Texas is a huge, growing state on a border. We have some very basic issues that need addressing, and I don’t think they’re being addressed right now.”
“It isn’t about cheap. You can make a pizza so cheap nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap nobody will fly it. It’s about the product.”
“A lot of people are perfect fits for universities. I’m a perfect fit for Texas Tech. I understand West Texas. I am West Texas.”
“I used to resent the fact that people romanticize Whole Foods. I always wanted to shake them and say, ‘Gosh, we’re just a grocery store!’ ”
“Nobody doing what I’m doing is important anymore. Not in the way Winchell, Kilgallen, Hedda, and Louella were important.”
“I knew immediately that they’d be serving ice water in hell about the same time I’d be cast in [Sideways].”
“The record’s clean. I’m sure that I haven’t done everything that everyone would like me to do. But I’ve never hurt anybody.”
“The worry is that we’re going to put the Bell system back together. You hear that a lot. Anybody who says that is just not informed.”
“He’s probably stronger now than when we were younger, but I’ve changed that same way. And we’ve probably gotten more conservative as we’ve gotten older.”
“I’ve had my failures and my mistakes. I don’t dwell on them. So I don’t have anything dragging me down at any given time.”
“People speak nostalgically about family newspapers. For every decent one, there were literally hundreds of embarrassingly bad ones.”
“Any idea you can think up and plan out isn’t going to be that good. There’s no way I could have thought up all of Holes beforehand.”
“The government didn’t understand the importance of saying to us, ‘This is a war for freedom every bit as much as World Wars I and II.’”
“The problem is that there’s nobody who can put their foot down and say, ‘Yep, by God, we’re going to do this . . .’ It’s a city without leadership.”
“I always thought that if I was having fun doing what I was doing and making a living doing it, then I was already successful.”
“There are a lot more people in the Democratic party who do what the Good Book says: Take care of the poor and the afflicted and the downtrodden.”
“It’s immensely gratifying to work with people who are trying to do their best at what they do toward a common end. And whether it’s an arrangement or the performance of a single song, I just love the feeling of watching three or four or sixteen people all working together.”
“We don’t look at color, we don’t look at religion, we don’t look at economic means. Laredo is a real laid-back, accept-everybody kind of place.”
“It’s funny: I’ve never been scared on a shuttle mission. It’s just the nature of the job. You’re busy, you’re focused, you’re well trained, and you go, ‘You know, if I’m going to die, there’s nothing I can do about it.’”
“They take a shot at the presidency indirectly through me, which is fine . . . It just angers me that our professional journalists have accepted lower standards. I feel like Sergeant Friday: ‘Just the facts, ma’am.’”
“I’m a good ol’ girl from Texas, and sometimes people misinterpret that Texas thing. I’ve learned to tone it down, but it’s been a drag. It’s the unfortunate aftermath of having gone to the mat with the wrong guys in Hollywood.’
“You know, talking to people is not appeasement if you know what you’re doing and you’re a good, hard-nosed negotiator. There ought to be nothing wrong with diplomacy.”
“The newspaper business? I don’t mind being in a dying industry, but it really pisses me off to be in one that’s committing suicide.”
“What does it say about us as humans beings when we listen to leaders who lie to us and, as a result, thousands of people are killed?”
“If we advocate righteousness and if in the way we live our lives we exemplify righteousness, we are winning by doing our duty. But if we try to mandate righteousness, we are wrong.”
“You feel like you’re passing through time, but you don’t really feel like you’re leaving any time behind. You’re kind of in the moment, because the wind’s in your face and there’s always another highway.”
“When a person meets a Miss America, they’re still impressed. They’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you were Miss America?’”
“The only way you hit that next level in terms of film persona is to let go and accept the fact that, for better or worse, you’re all you’ve got . . . The camera’s not as concerned with what you are can do as who you are.”
“Al Qaeda would not have been able to come back to life, in my opinion, had we not invaded Iraq. That action breathed life back into the movement.”
“Kids used to be so excited just to have an opportunity to play. Now I see more of a mentality of entitlement: ‘I’m a tremendous athlete, so you owe me this.”
“We have an unrelenting interest in seeing that the custom is well served.”
“I’m a personality and a singer—that’s how I make my living—but I’m always a guitar player.”
“We were wrong about the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. That’s far different from saying that we purposely manipulated or intentionally lied to the American people.”
“I’m there for the honor of serving John McCain. I wanted to check that box in my life.”
“Just because you played the game doesn’t mean that you’re confident enough to coach.”
“If someone can show me a way that we’re going to attend to the needs of kids without finding out where they are, without diagnosing the problem, I’m all ears. But it’s not possible.”
“If a shoe factory closes in Seattle, you can’t move it to San Antonio and have it competing there within a couple of hours, but with airplanes you can. I’ve always said that I want us to strike with the speed and alacrity of a puma.”
“Do I blame a single individual? Do I blame the nation for the mistakes we made that led us to Abu Ghraib and the abuses that occurred as a result of the actions we took? Do I blame the military or the Department of Defense for trying to contain this extremely embarrassing period in our history? I think when you look at it, what happened to me is that I got caught in a perfect storm.”
“‘LBJ’s war’ was not a war he had sought. It was a war he had inherited. It was a war he was trying desperately to get out of.”
“When I was playing in college and the pros, most of the articles called me a ‘future Hall of Famer.’ So you get that idea in your head. You feel secure and confident that you’ll be elected to the Hall of Fame, but it’s different when it actually happens.”
“You have to have action, you have to have humor, and you have to have emotional situations. And you have no time to waste. You have to get it all in there economically.”
“I always approach it as if I’m going to take the picture and, for whatever reason, that’s it. There won’t be another chance.”
“When his political people run the numbers, they see a different Texas, an emerging Texas. One that includes some of our more-conservative elements—God bless them, I respect them—but younger Texans as well. A Texas that is looking for change.”
“Here’s the thing: I was born and raised in eastern Kentucky. I wasn’t born in downtown Paris. What do I love? I love Southern food. I love soul food. I love barbecue. I learned about food in dives. ”
“When you come with absolutely zero connections, you have to claw your way up, which I did.”
“As Texas moves toward majority Hispanic status, the Republicans are going to have to do less shouting, less shorthand, and less sloganeering and court the Latino community in a way that’s relevant to Latino individuals—whether on education, taxes, or job creation.”
“People are going to hit, or they’re not going to hit. Some guys are going to have a better season than they had before, and some aren’t. There’s not a whole lot I can do except put the right players in the right positions and expect them to perform.”
“The great cities of the world are not defined by one or two ethnicities, religions, or backgrounds. It must be that way for San Antonio as well.”
“The complexities of the world are just now being tippy-toed into by churches, and that keeps us out of a place where people can find us, where they’re building community. It’s not that we’re locked out; it’s that we can’t find the door.”
“I don’t let people run over me. From the very beginning, I’ve never changed my ideas about what music should be.”
“I don’t like confrontation, although it’s alleged that I do. But I learned playing football that confrontation is necessary. You’d better get another sport if you don’t acknowledge and accept and willfully go after confrontation.”
“There’s not anything that’s happened since Election Day that proves to me that Bush is going to be moderate at all.”
The 39-year-old computer mogul on stepping down as CEO of the company he founded, why he doesn’t play footsie with the press (hey!), and the product line he should have launched years ago.