I come from an alcoholic Irish background - I know where I was going! But I met my wife and started to practise Buddhism, which is a levelling experience for me, and there hasn't been a day I've missed in 40 years. I apply it to everything - to my work and relationships. I try to be a compassionate person.
I'm still getting thrilled with music even after 40 years of doing it professionally.
I want to take a few years out, maybe make a couple of more films or whatever.
I was recruited to teach 9-year-olds. I taught for two years.
During the boom years of the 1990s, globalization emerged as the most significant development in our national life. With NAFTA and the Internet and big-box stores selling cheap goods from China, the line between national and international began to blur.
I was never afraid of failure after that because, I think, coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years, the actual experience of course fades, but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?
Daytime has been successful all these years because it caters to a very real need in the audience - to see something that's not nighttime fantasy. People watch daytime because it's like their lives.
The two largest oil-producing countries in Latin America, Mexico and Venezuela, sold petroleum to Nicaragua at concessional rates for several years beginning in 1980. The program was curtailed because Nicaragua could not make even reduced payments.
And when I was saying I want to become number one of the world and I was 7, 8 years old, most of the people were laughing to me. Because you know, it seemed like I have one percent chances to do that. And I've done it.
It's hard to think about 20 to 30 years down the road. Most people want to use the money now - it's tough.
Look, science is hard, it has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, and that's the result of 400 years of science, right? I mean, in the 18th century, in the 18th century you could become an expert on any field of science in an afternoon by going to a library, if you could find the library, right?
In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley.
I loved cowboy movies when I was a kid. When I was five years old, I was already wearing a cowboy hat and suit. When I grew up, I knew John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Kirk Douglas and so on.
I got married about three years ago again to a wonderful German woman. Her name is Monika and she is beautiful. She is one of the biggest women Zappa fans I have ever met in my life.
We are on Sunday night because that is where they put us 30-odd years ago. I think we became a habit.
Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.
I feel connected to the Second World War because my father lost his father in that war. So, through my dad and the effect it had on him of losing his father young, I always felt connected to the war. It goes back years, but it still feels to me as if we're completely living in it.
You grow up however, unfortunately, as the college years fly by, into a very exaggerated sense of your own capacities.
I came to England in 1962 as a very young bride, in my teens, hoping just to stay two years and go back.
For the past couple of years I've been pretty bored with music in general... just bored with it.
I'm not invited. I'm not on the A list, haven't been on it in 20 years and my feet have never trod its red fluffy carpets.
I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't.
Best two rock voices I've heard in a last few years both have been from grunge bands: it's Eddie Vedder and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden.
When I see myself at 14 years old I can put my hands on my head and think: 'How could I have done that?' but at that time it had sense for me. You do the same when you're 20. And now, when you look at people who are 20 years old you ask yourself: 'Was I like that? Was I really like that?'
I'd like to do Harvey again. I did it two years ago with Helen Hayes in New York. It was a joy. I was so glad to do it again because I never thought I did it right the first time.
As for ABC you can't take it personally. We had three good years.
The thing about being at home versus being out in the world working is, it's a whole different vibe. When I'm home with my kids and partner, I will cook - even though she's a very good cook. She's learned over the years. We started with basics, you know, how to saute onions, how to saute mushrooms.
I was certain when I was about 10 years old that I was going to be a special effects artist or a make-up man. I loved that stuff and pursued it for quite some time, actually.
Religions have always been clearly on to this psycho-therapeutic score. For hundreds of years in the West, Christian art had a very clear function: it was meant to direct us towards the good and wean us off vice.
I think it can be hard for any man to sometimes be upstaged by his wife. So when I'm home, I work very hard to be Todd's wife and Jade's mother. I have no problem going back to those traditional roles. I try to be Giada, the young girl that he met 20 years ago and fell in love with.
But it is possible that, in the days ahead, these years we have lived through may eventually be thought of simply as a period of disturbance and regression.
It's not just the players, it's the culture. Sometimes it's the people around them; the people who are looking after them - the money they're given. Some of the families give up their jobs and live off their sons. That would never have happened 10 years ago.
I found myself facing a Christian Science Reading Room. My God! It had been eight years. There had never been any renunciation of religion on my part, but like so many people, it was a gradual fading away.
The image we have of bin Laden in his final years in Abbottabad is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself; just another suburban dad flipping though the channels with his remote.
In business, no one pays you to have a really good year and then 10 bad years.
Even if we mortgage the next 100 years of generations of human beings, we would not have enough energy to build a Death Star.
