I have to admit that I had a lot of problems with poetry.
Look at the United States today. We have made mistakes in the past. We have had shortcomings. We shall make mistakes in the future and fall short of our own best hopes.
We had to figure out how to produce books in a cost-effective way.
The Japanese banks are not having an easy time as they once had.
My first job was at Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati, my second job was at a pharmaceutical company in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. My third job was at Palmolive. And I realized, three jobs in three years, maybe it wasn't the job. It had to be me.
If Iraq had succeeded in spray-drying anthrax spores to extend their life and lethality, that would have been among the most important secrets of its wide-ranging weapons program.
When I decided to go to university I didn't know what I wanted to do. When I had an opportunity to take an elective I took Drama by chance, even though I'd never taken a Drama course or even been in a play in high school. Two years later I was majoring in Drama and I knew I wanted to be an actor.
I did not know that you had to learn makeup. I just thought you went, 'Oh, I'm gonna put on some makeup.'
I have had friends for years who have never seen my house.
I have had to learn about saying no.
For me, it's been a treat to interact with authors who were publishing when I was a young reader. Judy Blume once gave me a pep talk at a writing conference. I had a short story featured in the same anthology as Beverly Cleary. Magic.
Whether it was H. P. Lovecraft's doomed towns or Shirley Jackson's lonely, looming 'The Haunting of Hill House,' the boondocks had all the fun. As a black kid in Queens, New York, I couldn't have felt more removed.
I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.
I sometimes feel it is to my disadvantage that I have not conducted the Cleveland Orchestra or the Boston or Chicago symphonies, but then I have had to sacrifice something in order to have enough time with my orchestras.
I was 19 years old, and I felt like I had the flu one day. Within 24 hours, I was in the hospital on life support, and I was given less than a 2 percent chance of living. It took five days for the doctors to find out that I had contracted bacterial meningitis.
'Heroes' really changed the game for me in a way that nothing before it had.
If we went back to the imprisonment rate we had in the early '70s, something like four out of five people employed in the prison industry would lose their jobs. That's what you're up against.
My mother had a fear of doctors - other than her daughter marrying one.
I had already done a lot of research for Rough Riders, keeping notebooks and old photographs. Some of the books were antiques for that time period, with the covers falling off.
I have friends who have had PTSD, and you can get it from other things than war.
Sometimes I wonder if there is something about my family which invites violence. 'Is it envy,' you ask? I don't know... I've had so much, a son as president, two as senators, a son-in-law who's an ambassador... perhaps God doesn't permit that much.
The best physique I ever had was when I was ballet dancing.
I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity, it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.
I drew a picture on the back of a calendar in pencil. In those days they used to give out free calendars, I had no art paper, so I took whatever else I could.
I love my music, so I want to produce, write, and serve my music. I've had to learn about EQ frequencies and programming and space and clutter and how to be a better piano or bass player - everything.
One of the books we read a few years ago that had a big effect on us was Repeated Takes by Michael Chanan.
I realized that equipment really had little to do with why I sound like the way I sound.
Before I got through high school I had attended 22 different schools. In the time before I was well acquainted with the latest school, I would amuse myself by drawing and found that I was pretty good at it.
I've had many idols growing up. The inclination for idol worship comes naturally to me. Or it did, anyway. I think I've gotten over it. It came as naturally to me as wanting to act.
I had started to feel that somewhere in the second half of the 20th century, the idea of page-turning as a good thing had been lost. You were getting books that were the equivalent of absolutely beautifully prepared dishes of food that didn't taste like anything much.
I have always had a dream to take part in an Olympic Games, and losing my leg didn't change anything.
He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.
I think I would have had trouble living with someone who didn't know what it was like to be an actor.
There were exceptions, a couple of families that just plain didn't want to even think about it, although forty years had passed but mostly the people were very interested in talking about it.
I had a great time doing 'Torchwood,' I really did.
We might imagine that Jesus had many human faults. He failed most humanly, in my reckoning, when he killed the fig tree just because it didn't bear any figs for his breakfast; that was a disgraceful, bad-tempered thing to do, and to try and make a virtue of it by saying it was a demonstration of faith only made things worse.
