Back in the Seventies, we had a romantic, poetic vision of the future, like it was in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey.' It felt as if everything was still ahead of us.
You know, it's amazing. I don't even have a car, would you believe it? I had a motorbike and it got stolen last year. So I've got to buy another one of those, I suppose. I can treat myself to that.
I had read Plato and Kant, but I had forgotten it.
I had a few ducks as a kid.
On my father's side, I'm descended from immigrants, one of whom was a Syrian refugee from the Armenian genocide, and my mother was an immigrant from Germany whose visa had expired and, for a year and change, was undocumented here in the U.S.
I have had the same person show up in a few cities with flowers. A lovely gentleman who gave me a picture of himself. I came home, gave it to Ian, and said, 'If I go missing, here's the guy.'
I think the only real knowledge I had before I went to Iowa was what I learned from 'Food Inc'. But once I got there and developed these extensive relationships with the farmers, I realized that we're basically made of corn.
I could definitely see myself living back in Australia again. If I had a family, I could move back.
I always was fascinated with China, because I was born in Europe, and for us, China had this fascination and mystery. The first time I came here was in 1989. They were on bicycles, and the speed of the growth has been incredible.
The thing is, 'Discworld' had been going on for a very long time, and I've written children's books as well. Usually when people have a really big series they franchise it, which I thought is a bit of a no-no, so I thought what I'd do is I'd franchise it to myself.
I actually never auditioned for 'Full House.' I had done a guest appearance on 'Valerie' as the next door neighbor's niece, and from that I got into 'Full House.' I was only five years old, and I was on the show until I was 13.
One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.
I considered that I had to write stories about the people I had met, with whom I'd worked, the history of my books - just in case I up and die.
The first time I sang in church, when I was ten, the applause was so overwhelming that I started to weep. My mum had to rescue me from the stage.
I had one of those farcical bar mitzvahs where they spell out the words phonetically on index cards, and you don't even know what you're saying.
I've had great luck with directors. I've worked with all the great ones.
I was the only kid in Manhattan I knew whose parents had a car.
It's a matriarchal family, the Carters. A.P. was the original head of the Carter family, but the women were always strong. There were no questions asked in that regard; you had better be strong.
You can call me a cheater and doper until the cows come home. But the fact remains that in a race where everybody had equal opportunity, I played the game, and I played it well.
I've actually had a copilot come out of the cockpit on a trip from L.A. to New York and ask me about Charles Manson.
I played football for Leeds United under-18s, but at 17 my eyes started to go and I had to wear glasses. The football had to go - there were no contact lenses in 1957.
Belly buttons were a big battle of mine. Down at the syndicate, they would clip them out with a razor blade. I began putting so many of them in, in the margins and everywhere, that they had a little box down there called 'Beetle Bailey''s Belly-Button Box. The editors finally gave up after I did one strip showing a delivery of navel oranges.
Israeli ingenuity was never more evident than in the Ayalon bullet factory built during the British occupation of Palestine. It was constructed underneath an urban kibbutz. The workers had a bakery and laundry which provided constant clatter to disguise the work carried on below ground.
I joined Yes in July 1971. I had heard Yes live, as Strawbs had supported them at a gig in Hull. I thought they were amazing - incredibly different.
There are very few people who have had as much public impact as I've already had... without being elected to public office in Massachusetts.
I never, in all my life, had anything whatever to do with robbing any bank in the state of Missouri.
You can have anything you want, but not everything. If it was really important to spend an afternoon at my daughter's school, I had to think, how was I going to organize my life to do that? How could I become more efficient? I always tried to put my priorities on the table, personal and professional, and work around them.
Life wasn't easy growing up; it was frustrating. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily, everything would have come easily, and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.
In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God.
I don't know any writer for whom it comes easily. Maybe John Updike - a story would just seem to come to him whole, you know, out of a personal experience. But the rest of us, I think, are not so lucky, and I had to work hard, yeah.
Unfortunately I had an ankle problem and underwent three operations.
I had a problem with cops pulling me over all the time for speeding. When I was doing Hill Street Blues, the cops said how much they loved the show as they were writing me up; meanwhile my insurance went through the roof.
The single life is bearable to me only through my work in science, but for the long term, it would be very bad if I had to make do without a very young person next to me.
There's a book called 'The Shack' - it had a lot to do with me coming full circle, meeting my birth mother. Awhile back, my birth mom and my adopted mom came to my show together, and it was pretty surreal.
I grew up in Evanston and lived in Chicago for a long time, in Old Town and Wrigleyville. I did three films when I was in high school. The first was 'Class,' with Rob Lowe. I had a supporting role in that.
Everybody in America started to define themselves by all these things they had around them. And all of a sudden it came tumbling down. So the old American dream has died, and that is a good thing.
