I had to jump around in the arts for a while just to survive. I earned a little money here and there, playing the guitar at union meetings, functions. I sold some science-fiction stories. I knew there was absolutely no question of me not being connected with the arts, but I couldn't find any acting jobs.
Yves Saint Laurent was my first fashion show. I wore his tuxedo. And Helmut Newton was my first photographer, in 1973. I was really very lucky. I had an amazing career.
I had known Cole Porter in Hollywood and New York, spent many a warm hour at his home, and met the talented and original people who were drawn to him.
I had an experience that was kind of backward. Instead of thinking that photography was a step down, it brought me a step up, to transpose and modify things.
I had 25 or 30 songs. Sequencing the record, I left that to the producer. I'm not into doing that stuff.
I learned to fly an airplane, and had my own airplane during the 1960s.
Pear Drops were exciting because they had a dangerous taste. All of us were warned against eating them, and the result was that we ate them more than ever.
So in one leap we had gone from being a friendly society to something almost professional.
Like everybody else, I've had relationships in which I was passionately in love but was completely miserable all the time and didn't trust the person I was in love with one inch.
I took acting lessons when I was 19, 20, and I had my writing.
I headed out to have a breather at the stage door, dressed in my tramp costume. I had my bowler hat between my feet and there were passers-by, and one of them turned back and said, 'Do you need help, brother?' And $1 fell into my hat!
I had my mouth done when I was 27. It was a botched job. Obviously, if I had liked my mouth I wouldn't have had it re-done.
I don't want people losing respect for me as a player. I want to go out in every game and perform to the highest level. I have no retirement plans. I've had a lot of injuries but I want to continue playing.
I love driving fast. I grew up in Germany; we have the Autobahn here, where we can drive without a speed limit. And throughout my 20s, I always had fast cars, and I always went to the maximum. Like, my average cruising speed was 250 km/hr.
I came from a different world from other designers because I already had such a strong fan base that was interested in fashion. You have to give the little divas something.
My father had a handgun on the bedside table, and we were all taught to handle firearms.
The German experience, as you can see, did move me very much. Seeing that terrible destruction and seeing the miserable state of the people, how they had been beaten down by the war through no fault of their own probably.
I drove across country in my yellow 1970 VW bug (which I drove until 1986) to Los Angeles, having had enough cold weather in 5 years in Ann Arbor, and found a job within a few days.
I'm not certain, but I have a little gypsy blood in me. And my mother always told me that her grandma could give someone the evil eye, and I'd better not cross her because she had some of that blood in her. Mother always believed that she could predict the future, and she had dreams that came true.
Because winning a gold medal had been a dream of mine since a young age, I needed to empty my mind during the preparation for the Olympics by telling myself that it would be OK not to win a gold medal.
All the praise I received couldn't substitute for the praise I had never received from my mother at home. I longed for some wonderful man to come and save me from my life - but there didn't seem to be any, at least not for me.
Becoming a bird ecologist was just luck! I had the chance to be a field assistant for a scientist working in the Galapagos Islands, and while I was there, I saw a particular problem in behavioral biology that I wanted to solve and, in the process, made myself into a bird ecologist.
Had I become a priest, the sermons would've been electric!
During my time as a judge, as a justice, and as attorney general, I've had one overarching goal, and that is a strict interpretation and application of the laws and the Constitution. I would be Madisonian.
I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.
Most of the southern hemisphere is unexplored. We had more exploration ships down there during Captain Cook's time than now. It's amazing.
My father worked at the Naval Ordnance Lab, and they had a nine-hole course on the property. You paid a quarter.
It has a Nazi echo, doesn't it? The Jews had to wear that Star of David, and Donald Trump is saying all Syrians have to carry an ID card and they can, without warrant, go into any Syrian's home or a mosque.
The truth is, I probably would be dead if I had become a star, because at that point I was so closeted and so afraid of people of finding out I was gay. There was no telling what would have happened.
I had been on the junior Olympic team in high school for trampoline; I could do twenty-six back flips in a row.
It took me a while to get back to 'The Queen of the Night.' I was angry with it as an idea because I felt like it had sort of ruined my life by taking so much attention away from 'Edinburgh.' So it essentially languished in a drawer until 2004, when I pulled it out, dusted it off, and thought, 'Oh, I actually really like this idea.'
Having secured my Indian actors, I started for Baltimore, where I organized my combination, and which was the largest troupe I had yet had on the road.
I had a happy marriage and a nice wife. I accomplished everything you can. What more can you want?
Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.
Singing as a full-time job was not something I had given a lot of thought to and I had no clear notion of the money to be made in it.
Definitely I love women, I love being around women, I find them incredible and intoxicating, and I've never had that feeling I get with women with a man.
