When I was 8 years old, I saw 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.
Sinatra had a lot of mood swings, but he was wonderful to my wife Barbara and to me. He made no bones about who he liked and who he loved, and he had this great charisma. When he walked into a room, it stopped. I've only seen that happen with Ronald Reagan.
Much before I entered films, my dad walked into my room and saw me busy drawing something at 3 A.M. He stood there for some time and said, 'Whatever career choice you make, you are going to be successful.' I'll never forget those words. It gave me the confidence to be who I am today.
But considering that I walked in expecting no complexity at all, let alone the visual wonderments, 'Snow White and the Huntsman' is a considerable experience.
I'm used to being the only black guy. I've seriously walked onstage, looked out in the audience, 15,000 people - and I'm the only one in the place. It's no big deal. My whole career's been like that.
I like cooking, but I don't think I could be a chef. Everyone from the ground up does terrible hours, whether you've just walked in off the street and you've got no experience, to whether you're the head chef. You can work 14 or 15-hour days. It's really, really intense.
I bashed myself. I cut myself. I caught on fire. I fell: I had been myopically focused on peeling garlic, and hadn't noticed a bin of beef at my feet until I walked into it.
I went to see President Nixon at the White House. It wasn't difficult to get a meeting because I was heavyweight champion of the world. So I came to Washington and walked around the garden with Nixon, his wife and daughter. I said: I want you to give Ali his licence back. I want to beat him up for you.
I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.
I was training in Gleason's Gym on 30th and 8th Avenue, where it was the Mecca of boxing, and a guy walked in who couldn't rub two quarters together and said, 'Did you ever think of being on TV?' And somehow I ended up in 'Taxi,' which is the craziest thing of all.
One of my agents once said I was one of the most dangerous men in London, and I was so excited by that. For a few days, I walked around Soho snarling.
My grandfather milked several cows twice a day and supplied the neighbours with dairy products. He liked to go visiting around the county on Saturdays, and he also enjoyed the neighbours when they came by once a week with their empty milk jars. He walked them out to their cars and hung over the driver's side window until they drove off.
I was an overweight kid, and I went through a period where, oh my God, they were making cow sounds at me when I walked down the hallway and just humiliating me. Kids can be mean.
As I toiled up the Mount of Olives, in the very footsteps of Christ, panting with the heat and the difficult ascent, I found it utterly impossible to conceive that the Deity, in human form, had walked there before me.
When someone gets sick, it is easy to get walked all over, walk all over people, and be so beat down you agree to things you would never normally agree to.
My grandmother, when she was young, would've walked past shops where some folks had out a sign that said, 'No Mexicans or dogs allowed.'
The last time I was in there to set up for a surgery, I was sitting in the waiting room ... watching television. And a special came on the news about a guy who got AIDS from re-used medical equipment in the VA. It was the same procedure I was fixing to get. I'm gone. Deuces. I walked out, man.
Still, the change is nearly indescribable - going from total obscurity to walking down a street in New York and having everybody turn and look; to feel the temperature of a room change when I walked in.
I think my greatest moment in business was when the first Southwest airplane arrived after four years of litigation, and I walked up to it and I kissed that baby on the lips and I cried.
It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, 'What does he do? What does he do?' My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.
First time I walked out on the Opry stage, Vince Gill was there. He kind of 'daddied' me through the whole thing. My knees were knocking. I walked out there, and I was literally shaking. They say it's the spirits or the ghosts. And out of respect for that whole establishment, I was really really nervous.
I remember when I was a kid and I would go to the comic-book store, I would have no idea what was going on in that month's issues. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what comics were coming out until I walked into the store.
Dave Mackay is my definition of a superstar. The man broke his leg three times, but wouldn't be carried off. He walked off.
I basically walked around with a goiter for four years because I was so afraid of surgery.
I was a kitchen porter for an hour at the Bank of England when I was 18. In the cafe, someone clicked their fingers and shouted, 'Boy, come and clear my table.' I walked out.
I like to make people think differently than they did before I walked in the room.
There was never anything I wanted to do more than play tennis. Never once walked out there and thought, 'I wish I was doing something else.' Not once.
Nan Kempner wore one of the first Saint Laurent trouser suits to one of those fancy Madison Avenue restaurants and was denied access. She famously took off her pants and walked in wearing only the jacket. And it was that kind of revolution that was echoed in fashion and in life.
When I walked into the room to meet Michael Landon, it was clear he was a big-time star. To be around him was as far from Charles Ingalls as you could get. The hair was the same - no one touched his hair.
I don't know that anybody has walked up to me in the street or in a store or in the grocery and said to me, 'I hope you bomb Assad.' Certainly plenty have said, 'No; thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down.'
When I walked up on stage at the Emmys, and when people stood up, it was a really sort of emotional, overwhelming moment. It was like I had been accepted.
Growing up in wrestling, I would see my uncle put on his mask before he walked into auditoriums. The kids would run up to him and ask for autographs and pictures, and seeing him lacing up his boots in the locker room and putting on his mask before heading to the ring, that was all so real to me. That was the modern day superhero to me.
Not everything in old age is grim. I haven't walked through an airport for years, and wheelchairs are the way to travel.
I've had some wins. And been knocked down with defeats. Glimpsed views from the top of the mountain. And walked through the darkest of valleys. But through this entire ride called 'a life' - I've refused to give up.
For a writer, New York works well. Literary work is very elitist. I worked two hours a day, maximum, and the time after that was very agreeable. I walked a lot with pleasure. Those two hours augmented the day. I wrote more here than in Paris, an entire chapter of a new novel.
In the hospital, I promised myself that I ever walked again, that I would eat well and swim every day.
