In the Middle Ages and beyond, the target was the Court Jew who had the ear of the ruler; during the Inquisition it was the Spanish Jews who thrived after their conversion to Christianity.
There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder. They had continually, in the course of the history of slavery, recognized such men.
I'd always wanted to write a novel, but after attending film school, I'd spent five years knocking on Hollywood's door and had put that idea aside.
As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that's what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbringing was militaristic.
I actually started off majoring in computer science, but I knew right away I wasn't going to stay with it. It was because I had this one professor who was the loneliest, saddest man I've ever known. He was a programmer, and I knew that I didn't want to do whatever he did. So after that, I switched to Communications.
I never felt I had anything to hide. I never felt being gay was anything to be ashamed of, so I never felt apologetic. I didn't have issues with it, didn't grow up with any religion, so I didn't have any religious, you know, issues to deal with as far as homosexuality is concerned. So, I accepted it very easily. For me, it wasn't that big a deal.
Fiji had experienced the ordeal of two military coups.
I was very competitive. I hated losing. No matter what, I had to win.
We all had jobs that were just fronts. I felt like I was in the mob. I had a job, but that wasn't my real job. My real job was to be an actor. I always knew that and never forgot that.
I do not have time to sit down and regret anything although sometimes I wish I had been able to see more of my parents while they were alive and have done more for them.
I just remember watching Federer the first year he won Wimbledon. He was struggling with his back problem. I remember it vividly. It looked like there was a chance he was not going to finish. He had that look in his eye. Then, somehow, he found the wherewithal to dig a little deeper, and suddenly he wins the thing, and he's a different player.
My grandmother had great influence on me. She was secretary of state in the 1970's, and that's when I was born. She showed me the importance of public service, and she was admired by people regardless of their political party.
I abhor a hoe. I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them.
I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. I made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clean conscience, but also to make a living. I was twenty-five. I had been told that one must make a living, and I believed it.
I look at the kids coming out of Yale. They are so intelligent with their careers. I wish I had that.
The first time Adam had a chance, he laid the blame on women.
I've been very encouraged by the nature of the conversations that I've had and by the lack of questions that are tunnel-visioned in their understanding of sexuality and life and love.
My parents would drive us to Florida every spring in this big old, rusy Suburban, and we'd collect stuff on the beach for our aquarium back in Ohio; we had this big saltwater aquarium back in Ohio. Every time we found anything, any mollusk, my mom would bring out the guidebook and quiz us on what it was, so that stuff was built in early.
But just playing the partner of someone famous, I had a lot more freedom.
In cricket, my superhero is Sachin Tendulkar. He has always been my hero and will continue to remain so. Apart from him and outside cricket, my mother has remained my inspiration. Whatever difficult time I had faced, she was always there for me. She has given me all the strength. She maintained her composure and supported me in tough times.
I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm.
You know, I never knew if I had any talent when I started in this business. My first job was being a page at The Tonight Show. I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he'd done the night before. I thought, 'I can do that!' I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.
I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power.
I had very clever producers, who scheduled it brilliantly, but scheduling it was a nightmare.
Others too would occasionally entertain and privately express such doubts; though we all had been most solemnly warned by the cruel murder of Saint Francis.
We here in the North have for many years had a natural tendency to feel that when our representatives come together at an international meeting, we embark on the quest of mutual understanding and support.
Being spokesman for a generation is the worst job I ever had.
My entire adult life has been devoted to family and career, each adding to the other in many rewarding ways. I have never felt that I had to set a pattern for my writing and teaching.
There's a lot of guys that just get comfortable with their positions and rest on their laurels. I had to earn my way.
My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: 'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.'
We had established Harley Quinn as an accomplice to the Joker who was also crushing on him and found herself in the middle of this weird relationship being at the beck and call of his every whim. We wanted to stretch her and make her a stronger character, so to have her leave him and go off on her own was a story I wanted to tell for a while.
When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries.
I've often had people ask me, would you allow a homosexual to be your friend. Yes, I will. And the reason I will is because I know that that person has problems, and if I can minister to those problems, I will.
I had a really good time with Martha Stewart, who also is somebody I really admire a lot. I've learned a lot from her and I think all of America has, about attention to detail and using fresh ingredients and making things beautiful and special.
If Carter had been there when the AIDS crisis came up, it would have been a whole different story. It could have been treated like a legitimate disease.
I wanted to be the first girl in my class to get married. From the seventh grade on, I used to write in my yearbook under each senior's picture, 'married' or 'engaged.' I had marriage on the brain.