I had never been near insane persons before in my life, and had not the faintest idea of what their actions were like.
The world fell apart. Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy. Why were people shooting all the Kennedys? Had the country gone mad?
When I was a kid, my pop used to take me to the double feature. He would take me - I had two brothers - and we used to go in the early '80s and check out these grindhouse movies - a double feature, sometimes a triple feature.
We are using resources as if we had two planets, not one. There can be no 'plan B' because there is no 'planet B.'
I never heard anything so brilliant in my life as I did that first time I heard Ornette. He played like some revolutionary angel. Soon, we were rehearsing in his place, music scattered everywhere, and he was telling me to play outside the chord changes, which was exactly what I had been wanting to do. Now I had permission.
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
It is not secret here in Congress we have not had the discipline in many instances to keep our hands out of the cookie jar of Social Security. Now to stop this I propose that in the future that Congress cannot get its hands on the money in the first place.
I don't think I ever had a swollen head: I remember where I come from.
The word 'insurgency' had connotations that really sent a shiver down the spine of folks in Washington, in the United States - for good reason, because it means this is something much bigger than just a few terrorist cells.
I don't think I had a script on 'King Kong.' But usually you read a script and then you go and audition for it. It's rare when there's no script. I sort of like the latter better, because I'm more successful at it.
I had a very happy childhood. I was lucky to grow up surrounded by nature and animals, to be outside all the time, and to work on a big farm with my dad.
One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict.
I went into college undeclared. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew that music was obviously this central big important thing in my life that I was gonna keep doing.
That room was not available, and the only other room had been booked for a Jewish bar mitzvah. I called the father and told him I needed the room and I would pay him to move the bar mitzvah to an adjoining room which was smaller.
I wanted to build up a little nest egg and go back to L.A. and choose roles that I wanted to do instead of roles that I had to do to pay the bills.
In 2004, I went onstage for the first time. They put a mike in my hand and pushed me out the door into the crowd. I did the three songs I had recorded and got out. It was the worst day of my life.
Through the Internet, I've developed a strong social network - something I could never do if I had to keep my choice of peers within school grounds.
I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films.
God, I mean I had so many people tell me, 'What you're doing doesn't work.' I used to have to get on stage and apologize for talking the way that I speak.
I think we felt the pressure more at first than this time around. But still you don't want to let anyone down. I never even met Patrick until we had a Christmas party at Ian McKellen's house on the first movie and then I didn't see him again until the premiere.
Before I turned 18, I had all these rules. Like, I could only work ten hours a day, and I had to go to school.
I've had a lot of tragic hairdos and outfits.
I had wanted to act since I was a kid, but I had a lot of shame attached to it. I didn't tell anyone because I didn't think it was ever a possibility.
I feel great. I had a triple bypass in 1976 and a quadruple bypass in 1984.
Were this not Texas, were there not a state where there were no protections at all and where the law was clear on that, I think CBS and Mary Mapes and Dan Rather and all of us had a very good chance of winning. So this is an ongoing battle about an issue of principle.
I've never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and didn't have the right attitude, didn't give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it; wasn't prepared and didn't have the whole program worked out.
I didn't have a hard time making it, I had a hard time letting it go.
To hear both critics and defenders talk about the fitness of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, you'd think the most successful Supreme Court justices had been warm, collegial consensus-builders. But history tells a different story.
Our first record didn't come out on vinyl, so I think that might have had something to do with actually being in a position to make sure that it came out in vinyl this time. It sounds way better.
I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.
I used to work for a non-profit organization where I worked as a mentor and a counselor to first-generation college student and they kept asking me 'What can I read to try to know what I'm about to be in for,' and while I did have some good suggestions, I figured... I don't know that that book is out there, and that's sort of why I had to write it.
The result was, when Congress convened in January 1971, everyone was now an environmentalist. They had seen a new force, college students, who favored the environment.
Everyone has a childhood, everyone had awkward years and weird stages. Mine were broadcast for eight years.
Now between '45 and '48, things would change enormously, 'cos we'd had credit in United States, credit from the Bank of America, credit from the Import-Export Bank and people had started working again.
There's an old actor's saying about how you don't work with children or animals. I disagree with both of them. Some of the best times I've ever had were working with kids because there's an honesty to them.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey's prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality.
