I've had people ask me if it would have been easier to take care of your parents if you had siblings, and I think it's 50/50. I know people who have siblings, and there is a lot of acrimony because somebody always feels that they are doing more than the other person.
I was nerdy and really into computers. I was a good student until my senior year, when I started traveling and had a lot of absences.
I'm a huge fan of a lot of different genres of music, and I really felt like somehow I had been pigeonholed a little bit - maybe of my own doing - and in a way where I felt like I was sort of falsely defined. What my music was being called wasn't really the music I was always listening to.
My first inkling of what the Commonwealth might really mean came only when I escaped the oddly British-tinged Asia I had known and went to live in the Philippines.
For me, inventing video games was just one successful thing I had done among many others.
When I got my first guitar, I played along with everything I heard that had guitar in it, like the Ramones, Nirvana and Sublime, as well as whatever hip-hop and R&B stuff was on the radio.
I had a big Akita, Yoshi, who was fabulous. I loved him. We lost him when he was 12, and I've never been able to replace him. Normally, most people lose a pet and get another and keep going on. But it just felt wrong to me; it felt disloyal.
I've always had a huge dream of opening an animal shelter.
I had a confused early hippie phase, which was like a cafeteria tray of sloppy, semi-Marxist thoughts, absorbed second-hand.
I was the guy who was friends with everybody. Yes, I had my core group of friends, but I wasn't part of a clique that excluded people. I hope they thought I was a nice guy. I tried to be just friendly and outgoing. I was class president. I'm supposed to run my class reunion in 2013.
At school I had only admirers; I had no friends.
There has been the biggest black cloud following me around. People believe it's all my fault that Steve is not here. He has always had an open door, and he doesn't choose to do this any more.
Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I've had a lot of experience with that.
I used to say that I didn't want anything to do with e-mail. It seemed really impersonal, complicated and weird. I had no idea what an amazing way it is to reach people.
I... had my mind blown by all the opportunities that were in California in the '60s and '70s. In Detroit, everything was Freud... Out here, everything was Jung.
With a track like 'White Christmas,' everybody has done that song in every format you can imagine, so I just looked at the chords at that particular song and what chords would make it work. That's kind of quite a sad song, and I had this idea of someone singing it in the subway, someone who is homeless, old and sad.
I never, ever, had a person who could come up with the name of a person who could not get a job because an illegal immigrant had stepped in front of them, because it was either a job that person didn't want to do or didn't exist.
After graduation, I wanted to work for 'Sassy', which I loved, but it had folded. So I wound up at 'Seventeen' for three years on staff and two as a contributor, and I wrote these great stories that nobody ever believes 'Seventeen' does. Serious stories for teens about social justice issues - gun control, migrant farm workers.
I want to look at life - at the commonplaces of existence - as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.
If you think about becoming a writer, that's just really one of the big dreams I had. It's really important to have those dreams and pursue your passions.
When we changed from Tiger to Nike, we had to have a design for the shoe. And where do you go to? There's no 'dial 9-1-1' for design.
When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.
Johnny was an athlete who didn't play sport. His first love was baseball, but he didn't think he had it in him to be a professional.
I had really loving parents and a happy childhood.
I had no ambition to become an actor at all.
The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.
My grandparents invented joylessness. They were not fun. I've already had more fun with my grandchildren than my grandparents ever had with me.
My mom, whether it's right or wrong, she had dreams for me to have a certain life. It takes time to get used to that. But they've been really supportive, and they love me for exactly who I am.
The first role that I got on Broadway was supposedly for a white man. But I had some producers who fought for me and allowed me to come in.
By the 1880s, baseball was entrenched in the Cape's sandy soil. Semipro teams, commonplace before World War I, were organized into the first Cape Cod League in 1923 - Orleans joined the four original teams five years later. By 1940, the league had foundered on financial shoals and disbanded.
In high school, I was always into Jerry Lee Lewis, and they decided they needed a piano player for the jazz band. I had my little boogie-woogie thing that I did, so I did my little boogie-woogie thing. I had a very high-pitched voice.
Close to birth... I lost, like, 80 percent of my hearing, and I had difficulty speaking.
I saw an advertisement to work for a Swedish institute in Karachi in Pakistan. I had just been offered a permanent assignment, teaching in Oulu. But I felt, 'My God, I am not going to stay here forever.' You know why? Because I was following international events.
My first pictures are from 1972, and my first proper camera dates back to 1973. During the first year I used my father's camera. It had a flash on it, which I don't like, but I didn't know anything about photography back then, so it was just what I did.
I grew up with a fascination with Marco Polo. I had this unlikely interest in the East as a young man, and you can't really read about Chinese history and philosophy without encountering him at every turn.
I remember thinking that the rest of my life would be solo. I wasn't weepy when I thought that - it was just a realization that I had gone this long being self-sufficient.
