I find it amusing when you look at plastic surgeons because they don't seem to have had anything done.
Honestly, when I had the idea to make 'An Inconvenient Truth,' and I was going out and raising the money, and I said, 'I want to make a movie about Al Gore's slide show, will you give me a million dollars?' People thought I was insane, looked at me cross-eyed.
It was in 1942 and I flew from St. Louis to Mexico City. I had just gotten married and we were on our honeymoon. I hit .397 and led the Mexican League with 20 home runs and was named the MVP of the league. It's when I realized I could compete with anyone at any level.
When I was little, I had concerts on the subway, and old ladies came up to me like, 'You are so good!'
I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.
Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work.
I lost my job in the most public way possible, and the press had a field day with it all over the world. And guess what? I'm still here.
I'm big on this 'no budget, no pay.' I think that's important. Let's get right at the heart of the issue. Even when I was in the state legislature, the most important function we had was to pass the bloody budget.
What I found fascinating for me was, I've never gotten so much approval and accolades and warmth and congratulations as when I had a guy on my arm that people thought I was going to marry. It was amazing. I mean, nobody congratulated me that hard when I had my three children.
I've had to change careers several times. Sometimes because my interests changed. Sometimes because all bridges have been burned beyond recognition, sometimes because I desperately needed money. And sometimes just because I hated everyone in my old career or they hated me.
We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: 'Boy, you are skinny, aren't you?' I said: 'Honey, I'd like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.'
I had a second trimester abortion. I was pregnant with a much-wanted child who was diagnosed with a genetic abnormality. I made a choice to terminate the pregnancy. It was my third pregnancy, and I was very obviously showing. More important, I could feel the baby move.
I love fashion from the 1930s and '40s - shoulder pads, high waists, things with structure. That is classy for me. Andrea Riseborough from the Madonna movie 'W.E.' had an amazing wardrobe.
If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles.
I did 'Land of the Dead,' which was the biggest zombie film I had ever made. I don't think it needed to be that big. That money went largely to the cast. They were great, but I don't think that money needed to be spent.
It was what I've always wanted, more than anything: to be an Olympic hero rather than a Tour de France star, something I had from childhood.
I was lucky enough at a young age to find out what I had a passion for, but whatever you've got a curiosity for, just give it a shot.
It was in 2003 that I realised there was no choice but to have dialysis treatment - by the time of the World Cup that year, I could barely walk. A year later, I finally had a kidney transplant.
Walter Cronkite had a golden rule for all wartime reporters: never self-aggrandize.
I had to deal with being somewhat of an outcast because it's not socially acceptable to be a struggling musician. There have been times where I've felt sorry for the person I was dating. I felt she deserved better.
If a big number of young pupils felt secularism was an attack on them, it was because the term had been misused and deformed in the public debate for years by the extreme-right and the right as an attack on Islam. The term had often been misused to point out how Muslims were different to others, and that is clearly problematic.
Most of my arguments with musicians through the years have had more to do with their attitude about music, or their attitude about their own lives, or their personal responsibility. Music has never really been the big centerpiece of the fight.
I used my instincts. It's very easy to imagine how you'd feel, actually. I just had to tell the narrative.
I'm really glad I had the chance to live in Jensen Beach and Stuart before everything exploded. I'm always going to be fond of that area. For me, it was a sleepy little fishing town, and it kind of represents what Florida was before the development explosion.
To recruit staff, I traveled all over the country talking with people who had been working on one or another aspect of the atomic-energy enterprise and people in radar work, for example, and underwater sound, telling them about the job, the place that we are going to, and enlisting their enthusiasm.
I regret that I had to leave my country. But I had to do it in order to achieve and decide my own fate. I was forced into it. Democracy came about 15 years too late for me. But I have to say that it's there now, and Czech Republic is a fantastic country; it always was but just had the wrong regime at the top.
I've never had a manager, and I've had various agents, and, fortunately or unfortunately, I've been blessed.
I grew up, and my body was not like a Spanish player. I was tall. I had a powerful game; my arms were long, so I'm like, 'No, you can't play like Spanish players.'
When I was 11 years old, my parents wanted me to do something besides get in trouble. So they enrolled me in sailing classes at the Sea Shell Association in Santa Barbara, Calif. From the moment I climbed into that 8-foot dinghy in 1952, I knew instinctively what to do and sensed I had done it before.
Turing was always a legend among computer/geeky kids. He was such an outsider in his own time, and because of that, he was able to see things differently. It was a story that had been well told in books, onstage and on TV, but never on film.
I hoped to win a medal and hoped it would be gold. I knew I was good but didn't know I would be the one to score something that had never been done before.
That's the beauty of coaching. You get to touch lives, you get to make a difference. You get to do things for people who will never pay you back and they say you never have had a perfect day until you've done something for someone who will never pay you back.
I always thought being a gamer and someone who had a sense of responsibility to the game and to my teammates was the honorable thing.
No baby boomer has a completely original idea, but after 13 years on 'Today' and another 11 on 'Dateline,' almost 30 years total at NBC, I felt the urge to find out what was 'behind the camera.' I had the feeling there was 'something more,' though 'more' might be less.
I made a vow that I wouldn't be tempted by what could happen to me if I went to Europe. I thought, 'You could be absorbed in it - it's so seductive, you might lose your own search for identity.' Then, when I did finally go to Europe, I was able to resist it because I had established my own identity.
I was married at 20 and had a baby by 21. I had to grow up fast. Luckily there were people who believed in me and there were always jobs when I needed one.
