Those who do not KNOW how to LIVE must MAKE a merit of DYING.

Like so many first generation CHILDREN of Indian immigrants, I learned to believe in a dream that is as much American as it is universal: a dream of EQUAL opportunity for all based on merit, of power concentrated not in the hands of a few at the top, but fanning across a large, educated, and civically engaged MIDDLE CLASS.

It is of no CONSEQUENCE of what PARENTS a MAN is born, as LONG as he be a man of merit.

I COULD give you some NAMES of WORKSHOP participants who are as GOOD as many who are being published but haven't had the right editor recognize their MERIT or have not been adequately published.

Audiences in every medium are becoming FAR more savvy. No one goes to watch a TOM Cruise MOVIE any more just because it's starring Tom Cruise. No one gives a toss. Concept is what makes actors raise their GAME. Everyone's on MERIT now.

The MERIT of 'The SPY Who CAME in from the COLD,' then - or its offence, depending where you STOOD - was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible.

If you BELIEVE, as I do, that MERIT is equally distributed between the sexes, then any RESULT that isn't AROUND HALF and half should be troubling.

'Men with GUNS' - the PRODUCER's cut did not have the artistic and INTELLECTUAL MERIT I hoped for, although I am still very proud of the work.

Administrations had COME and gone in PENNSYLVANIA Avenue, but many old ENTERTAINING traditions had survived - thru habit and not thru MERIT.

You don't NEED SEX and CONTROVERSY when your FILM has MERIT.

By denying its musical and ARTISTIC MERIT, hip hop's critics get to have it both ways: they can deny the legitimate artistic standing of rap while seizing on its pervasive influence as an ART FORM to prove what a terrible EFFECT it has on youth.