When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.
Economists agree about economics - and that's a science - and they disagree about economic policy because that's a value judgment... I've had profound disagreements on policy with the famous Milton Friedman. But, on economics, we agree.
If I had to name one thing that probably causes more conflict within the band, it's probably the fact that I'm the girl, and it takes much longer with hair and makeup and wardrobe. But they've gotten used to it. It's one of those things I think they realize that when they say she'll be ready in 10 minutes, it normally means 15 or 20.
Growing up, it was uncool to admit that your family had any money. And then, instantly, money was cool. In Reagan's parlance, it was about freedom of the individual, which was freedom to be greedy... individual versus society. There was a weird seduction in that, which I still feel.
However, from the very beginning of the program, we made it perfectly clear that we would be out of Europe in four years; that whatever was to be accomplished had to be accomplished in that period of time.
It's a huge change for your body. You don't even want to look in the mirror after you've had a baby, because your stomach is just hanging there like a Shar-Pei.
President Obama came to office with a strong belief that America had overreached, that we had become too involved. It matched the national mood, and indeed, there was some evidence that it was true.
I've had teammates I didn't get along with, who hasn't? I've never had a teammate call me a bad guy, while he was my teammate, and if he did when I was gone what kind of teammate was he anyway?
I had grown up as a fan of Studs Terkel. In Chicago he sort of looms large and is mentioned often.
Young Jimmy Dean fell off the world as suddenly as he had come.
If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.
I was always in trouble from an early age. I had a fraught relationship with my parents, who were very traditional. Doing plays at school was a joyous release.
I don't think I found my voice until I reached New York. I suppose it's possible I would have had some kind of different literary career if I had not discovered New York.
I had been learning Italian for years. I always loved Latin, but Italian is a living language; I'm writing in it now as well as reading it. It is so interesting delving further into language.
Strict conservation of energy in the elementary process had thus been confirmed also by a negative experiment.
It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.
I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me.
Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.
I've been acting for 15 years now, and the more you do, the more confidence you get about 'this is my career, and this is what I'm going to be doing.' Since I've started coming to the States, I've had a really great response. It's given me a lot of confidence to be more judicious about my own choices.
With the draft, everybody was involved. Everybody was fodder. When you got to be 21, 22 and graduated from college, for two years your life stopped. If you had been running in the direction of your life, you had to stop and do this other thing which was, if not menacing, just plain boring.
My sister and I both benefited hugely from the great security that our parents had given us, and then we went off and squandered it all rushing around in showbiz.
Film-making was not at all what I had expected.
My mom had an audition for a commercial when I was about two and a half, and I ran in crying and interrupted her. They thought I was cute so they offered me a commercial role. My mom was skeptical and a bit nervous about the child actor thing, but I was extremely bossy and convinced them I wanted to try it.
Since I've had a son, I want to be around to see him grow up.
Harry Truman's decision to fire Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War in April 1951 shocked the American political system and astonished the world. Much of the world didn't realize the president had the power to fire a five-star general; much of America didn't realize Truman had the nerve.
We rehearsed our 'Scarface' to the nines. Long period of rehearsal, so that by the time we started to shoot, it was almost like doing a play. We all had a grand time doing it. It was a wonderful cast.
I used to be sick of the backroads of Minnesota. I had to drive 30 miles to get home every day, take the schoolbus for two hours. But to drive through America and see the backroads, from Nashville to Memphis, Lovick to New Mexico, was incredible. It was probably the greatest trip of my life.
If I've had roadblocks along the way for being gay, I'm not aware of them.
I had no desire to be an film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eyelash. It was always a big bother to me.
After 1929, so many people had been traumatized by the stock market crash that there was a lost generation.
I never really had a chance to know the players individually... I thought when they were on the floor, they worked hard. But I never really got to know them.
I remember traveling around in Arkansas with Senator Robinson, and I told him what this little trick was. He felt very much part of it and had me take pictures of people unbeknownst to them.
Then I abandoned comics for fine art because I had some romantic vision of being like Vincent Van Gogh Jr.
It was definitely a part of our life. I mean, my mom had both her brothers and her fiancee in Vietnam at the same time, so it wasn't just my dad's story, it was my mom's story too. And we definitely grew up listening to the stories.
I was talking to my dad, who's a neurosurgeon. He had this academic paper he wanted to publish. Journals take about 18 months to publish a paper, and he just wanted to get things up there.
Half-jokingly, I asked what was wrong with me. So we made a deal: I would run his biological research provided I had a free hand to run my new project.
