Painting is just a hobby. I really don't think of it much more than that. But writing music and writing words... my life would feel as if it had a big hole if I took those away.
Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it.
I took the test for AIDS. I began to hate people who were not sick. Those people are monsters, I would think, believing that they are well because of moral superiority, because they are good. I identified with the loneliness of the sick. I felt that there was something pure about them.
So I just took some time off. I was maybe going to do two or three years and it turned into five years. But certainly, I'd say it was the best thing I ever did. And now I come back to this whole thing really energized about it.
It used to be that watching a film was a very special occasion, the same way flying was. Before, if you took a flight from New York to L.A., most of the windows would be open. Now, we get on planes and we just close them because we're so used to what it feels like. I think the same thing has happened with cinema.
When I was a deacon, my father took me and my older brother to general priesthood meeting in the Tabernacle. I remember how thrilled I was to be in the presence, for the first time, of the prophet of God, President Heber J. Grant, and the other prophets and apostles.
Somebody asked me - you know, how come it took you so long to win a national championship? And I said, 'I'm a slow learner; but you notice when I learn something, I have it down pretty good.'
I grew up learning ballet, and then I took up contemporary as I got older. I probably thought I was going to be a ballet dancer when I was younger, but at a certain age, I really was more interested in acting.
My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky.
When I was at the Cordon Bleu things took hours and hours and hours to make. And they were beautiful dishes - and I know how to cook that way - but I was like, 'no one is cooking like this.'
I learned to yodel pretty well. It took me a few months, but I eventually perfected it.
My mom can't defend herself to the world. She is such an amazing woman, with such an open heart. It's a real hard line, and I crossed it. I took everyone's life story and assumed it would be a great thing to put on screen. I was being selfish and I feel so horrible about it. I feel so guilty.
The events leading to the discovery of tunnelling supercurrents took place while I was working as a research student at the Royal Society Mond Laboratory, Cambridge, under the supervision of Professor Brian Pippard.
So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation's hoop I thrust it in the earth.
My mom really raised me, so I took her name before I ever thought about having a career. It was for personal reasons. My birth name is actually Max Deitch.
Knowing that Gene and Morgan were playing those roles made it much easier to put the script together-we knew who we were writing it for. It took some mystery away.
My career always took me away from home, I was always away from home and I just wanted to be at home.
I believe if people understood each other more, if people took the time and realize it's not 'all about me' and I'm on a big planet with a lot of other people and concerns, maybe we can learn how to get along with each other.
I had to produce a complete page - or two or three - in one day. I took a lot of pride in my work, and I hated to do a mediocre job. Evidently, some of the writers enjoyed my work best of all for that very reason.
Martin Luther King took us to the mountain top: I want to take us to the bank.
My father took me back home, back to Greenwich Village, and he thought by taking me out of the orphanage he'd be out of the World War too. But no way - they got him anyway. He went in the Navy and then I lived on the streets.
The Giraffe took the horse's head and led him along on the most level parts of the road towards the railway station, and two or three chaps went along to help get the sick man into the train.
Someone skipped on the rent and they left behind a huge upright piano, which got moved into our apartment so the other apartment could get rented out. I took to it and started playing.
I was going to be a musician, no matter what it took. I supported myself with blue-collared jobs so I could write music and be in a band and play shows. I even got into an underground art scene. I was going to do whatever.
I took a workshop from him a few months after that. That experience changed my whole approach to photography. At that workshop in Yosemite in 1973 I decided I wanted to try and see if I could pursue this for myself, and I'm still trying.
My level of cynicism about the reasons that took us to war against Iraq remain just as well-developed as they were before I went.
I wasn't really the most charming person, socially - it took me a long time to develop my people skills - but the one place I was always comfortable was onstage, acting or singing.
Yeah, you know, I performed occasionally. I was in such despair because I just - if I didn't have my music to connect with, I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing. There was never a 'B' plan here; it was just this. So it took me a long time to find my way.
And then 'Wanderlust,' Ken Marino and David Wain wrote the funniest - they're amazing. That was one of my most favorite creative experiences; we're all up at that commune, a small group of people. Everyone was funnier than the next. It was an amazing ensemble feeling. Everyone gave and took in the best way.
It just took all of that to come to a screeching halt, to get to the point of having nothing, for me to finally realize, Hey, what are you fighting with this for? Until then, I hadn't claimed my faith as my own; I had just grown up with it.
The successful man is the one who had the chance and took it.
When I went to Moscow, I felt I was relearning Swan Lake - which was written for the Bolshoi - and being immersed in a tradition and history I had never experienced. It took a while to adjust to living there and learning the language, but now I have lots of friends. I get the best of two completely different worlds.
I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books.
The cosmetic industry really took off in the 1950s.
No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.
When I took the habit, the Lord immediately showed me how He favours those who do violence to themselves in order to serve Him. No one saw what I endured... At the moment of my entrance into this new state I felt a joy so great that it has never failed me even to this day; and God converted the dryness of my soul into a very great tenderness.
