I'll never forget when me and Jason Matthews wrote the line, 'Don't be a tape player hater,' in 'Country Man,' I don't think I ever laughed harder. We didn't know where we were gonna put that in a song, but we knew we had to make it into a song. I just remember laughing and being so proud of such a goofy little line.
Well, I'm grateful for all the experiences that I've had.
Once I started looking for a record deal, I had a trainer. And the trainer told me that I would never sell a record if I didn't lose weight.
'Home Alone' had become the absolute biggest film I had ever done, and it became the third-highest grossing film of all time. So clearly it had an effect on me that is unparalleled to any other film experience in my childhood.
We only call at ducks when their rear ends are towards us. If I'm looking at you and you call my name, then I know where the sound came from. But if you had your back to me and I holler and you turn around, you would assume somebody hollered. You want your decoys to represent the sound that you're making.
From the time I was 16 and I had my own checking account, you'd think most young women would run out and buy clothes. No, I ran out and got myself a psychiatrist!
I was famous in a way that was kind of terrifying. I had no protection. When reporters showed up at my house, there wasn't even a sidewalk. They were literally parked on my front lawn.
I had spent the summer of 1966 working at MIT in the group that was the MIT component of the Multics effort.
Quite simply, I maintained contact with Sinn Fein and believed that there had to be a political, not a military, solution to the situation in Northern Ireland.
The first book advance I got was paid out in thirds. And over time, as I've had different deals, the advances get chopped up into ever-smaller parcels.
One fan wrote asking for a very specific autographed photo. He wanted me to pose in tight jeans and boots and even enclosed a sketch of how I should dress! A lot of them just say they wish they had a girlfriend like me. They're very endearing letters.
I've had a job since I was 11. I had a paper route, I worked at a video store, I was a toy doll at FAO Schwartz when I was in high school. And I think that it's made me really disciplined when it came to pursuing acting, because I had no clue how to go about it.
I went to a very academic school that actually - when I got to the point of wanting to pursue acting, they just had no idea how to do that, because all of their contacts were very academic.
I went to college because my father thought that I should learn engineering, because he wanted to go into the heating business with me. There, I realized I wanted to be a physicist. I had to tell him, which was a somewhat traumatic experience.
I get such joy out of performing for people, and you can tell whether they like you or they don't like you the minute you walk out on the stage. And they don't even have to tell me that they had a good time. I know they had a good time.
I had a very progressive drama teacher who would buy all the plays that were in New York and bring them to suburban Texas.
I never studied, but I had the best teachers.
I was 22 when my mother gave me the original box set of 'Roots' and she said, 'I want you to watch this.' I watched the whole thing back to back in the span of 24 hours. It had a profound effect on me. It felt like my story.
My handwriting was nothing to write home about, and I had this idea that calligraphy was like taking Latin in high school: that it was one of the bricks, the building bricks, that you had to understand about the forms of writing.
If a gigantic asteroid were barreling toward impact with our planet, you can bet there would be at least a few members of Congress who would insist on leaving it alone, either because they would see it as a warning shot from the Almighty or because a mining company with a savvy team of lobbyists had laid claim to the big rock.
If I wasn't acting or doing stand-up, I would be in animation. Or if I had the discipline I might studies physics.
After a brief period in which I had let many a Southern Californian convince me that it was all 'in my mind,' I am once again officially allergic to dogs.
I was drafted during the Korean War. None of us wanted to go... It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended. We said, 'Wait a second? Didn't we just get through with that?'
I will never forgive Joe for that awful operation he had performed on Rosemary. It is the only thing I have ever felt bitter toward him about.
I applied to only one college - the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania - and was fortunate to be accepted. After graduation, I headed to Wall Street and worked as I had dreamed.
I was very blessed it was Steven Spielberg who made the movie. He was very much into the redemption side of the story. They asked him in an interview why he had owned the rights to this story for 20 years before he made the movie, and he said, 'I wanted to see what the real Frank Abagnale did with his life before I immortalised him on film.'
People say a lot of hurtful things, but in a way, the abuse that I endured from my husband prepared me for that. The things I had been told and drilled into my head from him were worse than what anybody could say to me.
I damaged all the complicated bits of the brain to do with processing and emotional control. I was prey to every single emotion that swept over me and I couldn't deal with it. I had to re-learn things from scratch.
I have this dog named Marley, and it is a kind of love I had never known. I have a hard time believing Marley did not come from my body. I know that sounds insane, but I feel that connected to her. She made me realize I wanted to adopt children.
The idea of a musical comedy was something we had had in mind for many years, but the project 'Igudesman & Joo: A Little Nightmare Music' has a history that goes back five years. I can say that this is the most successful project that we have ever done.
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright would baptize Obama, perform his marriage to Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, baptize their daughters, and draw him into the raucous, restless family of faith that Obama had never known before.
I'm quite glad I never learned to play the guitar, because I think I'd write songs that were more classically structured. As it is, I've had to create my own way of writing, which isn't typical. Everything's a big crescendo.
If you had told me in 1997 that even 5 people would be waiting online for me to sign my new book in 2009, I would have jumped around like Joe Carter in the 1993 World Series. I love it. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't like it. The only thing I worry about is carpal tunnel syndrome - my last tour almost caused it.
When I decided to go to L.A. I said I was going to quit modelling and just go and see how I do. In the first two weeks I got three movies. I was so excited I had all my furniture shipped out from New York.
I had a year off, so my wife and I were heading to Italy to study Italian. We found a little house in a village called Atrani. I discovered that Gore Vidal lived right above us in a big house, so I sent him a note.
My first record was made in Termonfeckin, which is a small town on the north-east coast of Ireland. I had been in London, but it didn't click. So, at home, I didn't think about making something, just whether something could be made. There was no grand plan.
