I see so many people LIVING in a bubble. They want to be SAFE, they want their kids to be safe, and they want their friends to be safe. And I GET that. That's awesome and really admirable. But LIFE is not about who gets out the cleanest at the end, or who's the most well-preserved and healthiest.

I'm STUBBORN, which is not NECESSARILY ADMIRABLE.

Many of the familiar little THINGS that we USE every DAY have typically EVOLVED over a period of time to a state of familiarity. They balance form and function, elegance and economy, success and failure in WAYS that are not only acceptable, but also admirable.

John Brown was CLEARLY flawed in REAL life. He did some terrible things, but he did some things none of us would have had the heart to do. His MORAL leanings were unquestionably admirable.

McDonald's is almost 50 years old. For 47 years we had a PRETTY CONSISTENT track record of being able to deliver ADMIRABLE SALES.

There are good intentions behind many people's conversion to veganism, including an admirable devotion to the well-being of ANIMALS and a justified skepticism about the crap the USDA allows manufacturers to put in our FOOD. But it's hard to IGNORE the often sanctimonious NATURE of what some nutritionists view as an 'extremist' way of eating.

The SHORT form, for those people who can master it - and I am by no means one of them - it is very admirable, because it is really hard to tell STORIES that can STICK with the audience and STILL be between 5 and 30 minutes long. I think it's a real challenge.

The first fight I saw live, the FIGHTER I was shadowing lost in front of a crowd of FORTY thousand people. The scale of that is staggering to me. Undergoing that overlap between something very PERSONAL and something very public strikes me as both ADMIRABLE and also somewhat terrifying.

A publisher SAW one of my historical NOVELS and THOUGHT I would WRITE an ADMIRABLE detective story, so she offered me a two-book contract, and I grabbed it.

I don't want to be Angelina Jolie. Not that Angelina Jolie is not the most talented, BEAUTIFUL, SUCCESSFUL, amazing, admirable person who does GOOD things for the world, but I don't want to be a movie STAR LIKE that.

I KNOW that throughout their HISTORY, the people of the United States defended their FREEDOM, their liberty, their justice, and their RIGHTS - if NEED be - with their lives. I think their courage is so admirable.

This is the MARK of a REALLY admirable man: steadfastness in the FACE of TROUBLE.

There was one man in the Labour government, Robin Cook, whom I had a very high regard for. He had the courage to speak out and to resign over IRAQ. He was an ADMIRABLE man. But resignation over a matter of PRINCIPLE is not a very fashionable thing in our SOCIETY.

Activism is a very ADMIRABLE way to create change, but it has to GO hand in hand with personal contact with the PEOPLE with whom we have opposing points of view; without that, there will never be any MOVEMENT.

I saw novelists as being ADMIRABLE PEOPLE and I thought... I thought... MAYBE, one DAY, I could be one of them.