When I was a child, I wanted to be an actor, but I had really bad buckteeth. I didn't want to get braces, but my mom said I couldn't be an actor if I didn't get the braces. So, I got the braces.
But we had - I think if you look at law enforcement 10 years ago, if you look at the challenges, the FBI was focused excessively on what was happening in the United States.
Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.
Chicago, we always had it. People just shied away because it's nothing businesswise from the industry. Everybody from Chi will go to N.Y.C. or L.A. - R. Kelly to Kanye to even Twista. Everybody is great from there, but it's nothing downtown.
If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.
It was a nightmare. The band had to tour Greenland by bus.
I had a musician friend once tell me that it's not in the orchestra that you get the true test of the musicians but in the little trios and quintets where you really get to see if they've got the stuff. And the composer.
I don't really want to go into it, because whenever I say anything about my past now, it becomes a pissing match... but I realised that I had acquiesced, in my 40s, to an idea of 'You know what, maybe this thing that you wanted in your life, maybe it just wasn't important.'
I hadn't accepted he was seriously ill. The idea that someone so close to you couldn't wake up was utterly incomprehensible. Then the doctor came in... Maurice had no brain left. There wasn't any activity at all.
Yes, now I understood for the first time that my soul was not so poor and empty as it had seemed to me, and that it had been only the sun that was lacking to open all its germs, and buds to the light.
They had me doing Beach Boys remakes and all that. I was basically a marionette.
Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.
When I first started VMware, I was very shy and self-conscious about speaking. I grew out of this by giving talks each week in front of the whole company; gradually, as we scaled, I had talked to more and more people, and this is how I conquered my fear of talking to people.
This is an old family secret, and I just found this out recently, and it almost broke my heart. My mother said to me, 'I had never told you this, but God, you were an ugly baby'.
'The Wizard of Oz' is my favourite. It explains what life on this planet is about. Although Dorothy reaches Oz, she finds she had what she needed to go back to Kansas all along, but the Good Witch tells her that she had to learn it for herself. All of the answers to the meaning of life are there.
They told me at the end of that test that they wanted me to be a part of this project. I walked out and had a moment of clarity where I thought, not many people will ever have this moment.
The Athenians had an oath for someone who was about to become a citizen. They had to swear that 'I shall leave the city not less but more beautiful than I found it.'
If I had been at a University I don't think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work. I don't think I have been as successful.
I have had it with people who are threatening me and my kids and my family over simply commenting on the law and criminal procedure, and respecting juries. Because they do work hard. They work way harder than I do; and they work way harder than the rest of those people making those peanut gallery comments.
In basic training we had been told to watch out for Japanese spies.
Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
I haven't had sex in eight months. To be honest, I now prefer to go bowling.
But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.
We're encouraged by the engagement on ClassPass and the tremendous growth we've had that shows we are fulfilling our mission of helping people live a more active life.
When I first came out, like a lot of the artists at that time, I had a very polished, very overproduced sound.
If the Latterday Saints had not abandoned plural marriage, they would have remained a fringe religion and would never have moved into mainstream American culture. Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thrives. It is one of the fastest growing religions in the country and is the most successful American-born religion.
My first spoken word poem, packed with all the wisdom of a 14-year-old, was about the injustice of being seen as unfeminine. The poem was very indignant, and mainly exaggerated, but the only spoken word poetry that I had seen up until that point was mainly indignant, so I thought that that's what was expected of me.
By the end of 2001, between 100,000 to 150,000 Algerians had died in the civil war, as well as 120 foreigners. The cost to the economy ran into billions of dollars. And all this in spite of a tough, 120,000-strong army backed by 80,000 police.
Amy Carter, Chelsea Clinton and the Obama girls all had to change schools.
I had higher math SATs than in English - yet I became an English major in college.
As far as feeling freedom in my career now versus five years ago... I think if I feel any more free it's simply because of the experiences that I've had, and the wisdom I've accumulated from that time.
I've always had a natural affiliation with nature. If I wasn't an actor, I'd be some sort of biologist working in the field in Africa or something.
I have always had good strength in my legs from working out with weights. I have also been riding a bike of some sort for most of my life and have good agility.
My high school didn't have a football team; we just had like a surf team, because I grew up in Encinitas, California, which is the ultimate place where everyone skated or surfed, so it was a very different culture. It was, like, cool to be the art kid.
I had always been interested in mythology. I suppose my brief stay in Wales during World War II influenced my writing, too. It was an amazing country. It has marvelous castles and scenery.
The day after the prison was transferred to the military intelligence command, they had an entire battalion - 1,200, 1,500 soldiers - arrive at Abu Ghraib just for force protection alone.
