When I was a teenager, I was really into hair; I dyed it different colours and had loads of haircuts. I shaved my head when I was 17 - it was pretty radical!
Growing up, I saw my dad do charity work for children with health issues. That had a profound effect on me.
I have had a lot of blessed, interesting things happen to me and have bumped up against some amazing people.
My guitar was loud as hell, and I had no sympathy for anybody else.
A generation ago, or two, when there were three channels, plus PBS, and when you needed - when you needed 15 million people to make a living, the media could focus on the broad country. And most people had no choice about getting political information. It was there at 6:30 whether you wanted it or not.
The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.
The first weekend after the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush had a meeting at Camp David with his top advisors, including Colin Powell, the secretary of state. And there was a lively debate about Iraq policy, in which some people from the Pentagon were arguing that the war against terrorism should include Saddam Hussein.
In college, I would follow Bob Dylan around, and I would show up to a concert, and he would sing some song he hadn't sang in a long time, and it would speak to something, and I would think it had some great fateful implication.
Even more than this, however, the sick - like lepers - were often reviled because people believed that they had brought their torments upon themselves.
I have written my own screen version of Pern, but had no buyers yet.
My mother is Turtle Mountain Chippewa, and she lived on her home reservation. My father taught there. He had just been discharged from the Air Force. He went to school on the GI Bill and got his teaching credentials. He is adventurous - he worked his way through Alaska at age seventeen and paid for his living expenses by winning at the poker table.
The train we had so confidently boarded had been speeding at almost 100 miles an hour and it had derailed. Someone, I can't remember who, showed me a newspaper photograph of the carriage we had been sitting in tilted on its side on a station platform next to a large notice that said Welcome to Potters Bar.
Early on, New York already had a national and even international identity.
Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he would lock his eyes on to mine and keep them there.
It isn't that I was born thinking I had to be president. I'm getting a lot of encouragement to run from people across the country. I don't believe this is a rash decision.
So I went in front of the judge, and I had my St. Jude prayer book in my pocket and my St. Jude medal. And I'm standing there and that judge said I was found guilty, so he sentenced me to what the law prescribed: one to 14 years.
I'm not a stereotypically beautiful woman, and I'm so happy that I'm not. I've seen those ladies - the need to be attractive at all times is ghastly. Also, in your twenties, if you are beautiful, everything comes to you, so you never need to develop a personality. I never had that problem.
Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former.
I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his.
At the Isle of Wight, the sound went out and kind of kept on going. And I wasn't... when I came off stage I was kind of unhappy about how we had played. But now, I listen back to those recordings and it's not bad.
I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.
And I just remember, you know, breaking into tears and feeling so empty because, as long as Elvis was in the world, you always knew something was going and he always had something that kept everybody mesmerized.
Having grown up Protestant, I was unfamiliar with St. Francis. Then I watched the movie 'Brother Sun, Sister Moon'... I just became fascinated with the character of St. Francis. What I saw in that movie was a man who had fallen in love with God, someone for whom God was everything.
If you haven't had a few dents in your resume, you haven't tried.
I hold all of the songs that I have had the pleasure of recording and performing in high regard.
I've had dreams about tricks.
I just started writing for my own amusement and occasionally singing in little clubs around Los Angeles. Then I wrote 'The Rose,' and through a series of divine things that I had no control over and had no idea were going to happen, it got in the movie, and that changed everything.
I absolutely believe in the power of tithing and giving back. My own experience about all the blessings I've had in my life is that the more I give away, the more that comes back. That is the way life works, and that is the way energy works.
Well, you know, I had been a peanut farmer. I had - you know who was the first president - Democratic president I ever met? Bill Clinton.
Later, I could take something off my slider and I could make my fastball sink, so I really had four pitches.
It is a pity that instead of the Pilgrim Fathers landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock had not landed on the Pilgrim Fathers.
Heaven would indeed be heaven if lovers were there permitted as much enjoyment as they had experienced on earth.
Carol Burnett probably had the biggest influence on me as kid. Although I was very young and watched her a lot in reruns, I was mesmerized by the way she transformed, by her physical comedy and the rolling laughter from the live studio audience. I loved her most as Scarlett O'Hara and her well known Cleaning Lady character.
In the early '80s, my sound - especially that mysterious kind of synthesized sound that was used so much - every relatively cheap TV show eventually had it because it's not expensive. It's just one guy doing the whole soundtrack. So it was overdone.
Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
We certainly grew up and had opportunities. But it's not like our parents are aristocratic blue bloods.
