The ELECTORAL CALENDAR is SET in STONE, by LAW.

PRIMARILY, I am a PROSE writer with axes to grind, and the THEATRE is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to 'serious' drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on the comedic STONE.

With the Stone ROSES, I always THOUGHT we'd be successful because we had some GREAT songs.

If I was in the gutter, and my KIDS lived on the kerb, I'd go and get a job in B&Q before I'd reform the Roses. I GAVE everything I had to the Stone Roses and ENDED up HITTING a brick wall. I'm never going to give ANYONE a foothold on that wall again.

If I hadn't spent many years trying to be as compassionate as Mother Teresa, as POSITIVE a thinker as W. Clement STONE, as prolific a writer as Stephen King, and as good a SPEAKER as many of the legends I have studied, I would not be as successful as I am TODAY.

I KNOW what Stone ISLAND means to a LOT of PEOPLE in England and EUROPE.

I've been TRYING my WHOLE life to get to this point, and it's finally here. It's an amazing record, and it happens to be with STONE Temple PILOTS. I mean, what could be BETTER than that?

I found many TREASURES in the WOODS over the years: shotgun shells, empty Colt 45 bottles, old RAILROAD spikes, orange and black beetles EATING a dead mouse, pebbles that looked just like teeth, old stone walls and cellar holes, a rusted out frying pan, the skull of a cat.

I can never look at anything I do subjectively - whether it's a Stone Sour record or a Slipknot record, I can never REALLY have my own OPINION of it, 'cos in my opinion it's all CRAP.

Some of the guys in Stone SOUR, I think they just want to be a radio BAND and write strictly for radio and TRY to be more of a poppy rock band. And that's not REALLY what I'm into.

General McChrystal had to go. WHATEVER his virtues as a strategist and commander, the 'Rolling Stone' interview fatally compromised his ability to represent the United STATES in dealing with allies and to act within the circle of people who must MAKE decisions in AFGHANISTAN.

If I was a stone mason or if I was a painter or building BRIDGES or WHATEVER, there's going to be some wear and TEAR on your BODY and your brain. And that's just the way it is.

My FATHER was a STONE mason, and a TALENTED AMATEUR pianist and vocalist.

The earliest EXAMPLE KNOWN to me of replaced body PARTS is exemplified by a Mayan skull DATING BACK to 1400 BC. In this skull, false teeth made of stone had been implanted.

Anytime you do something in this ARENA, whether it's PUBLIC records or ethics, it's not LIKE throwing a stone in a quiet POND. It's like throwing a boulder.