I spent five years of my youth in prison - some very bad prisons.
I've been a fan and collector of Lucie Rie for years.
I lived in Camden, Primrose Hill and Kentish Town for 10 years.
I was 21 in 1968, so I'm as much a child of the '60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared; the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies, in the West anyway, would have seemed absurd in 1968.
When I was 18 years old I went to Shakespeare Company, the school, and I wrote a poem about my leaves - I felt like a tree that had no leaves. That is the life at 18.
I definitely love record stores. And worked in many over the years. Having said that, it's not necessarily that I love vinyl per se. I mean, I'm happy to use CDs and MP3s: to me, it's the music that's top priority. I do have a good collection of vinyl, but I rarely actually pull it out.
I'm not a crybaby.
During my six years with them Dr Garnet Davey (subsequently Research Director) constantly supported me and, I have no doubt, fought many battles on my behalf to keep the initially controversial programme going.
It's like this: The time between having an idea and its public launch is measured in days not months, weeks not years.
Life has survived for more than three billion years because it is robust, and almost no mutations can easily outwit the defense mechanisms built up through eons of exposure to potential pathogens.
As a youngster, I lived in Philly for 12 years, and I would go up to New York to do shows and make money - it was the dream to maybe be able to survive there and live there.
I think we're realizing that gay people are able to do the type of comedy that we just assumed was for straight people over the years. Whatever old boundaries there were, which were very real and still have an effect on us, in the way we socialize, I think that's slowly becoming less important.
Today in America, we are trying to prepare students for a high tech world of constant change, but we are doing so by putting them through a school system designed in the early 20th Century that has not seen substantial change in 30 years.
I was always taught as a kid that if there's anything you want in life, you've got to work towards it. I guess that sort of stayed with me, really. But also, for me, from the time I was, like, 10 years old, all I ever wanted to do was be in a band and make music.
I bought a Jaguar when I was 28. I'd always wanted one. I had it for years, then my friend had it, then my dad had it. It was a good workhorse.
When I was 12 years old, living in Cairo, my parents enrolled me in the American school. Most of the Americans there appeared oddly stifled, determined to remain, if not physically then sentimentally, back in the United States.
In 'A Confession,' Tolstoy found meaning that he could hold on to, and he lived for another 30 years.
We have an incredible national forest service, and we have an incredible child outreach program that the president has put together. I don't see anything wrong with national service for a minimum of two years. If we were to require that, we wouldn't need a draft.
Botox and other fillers make everybody look the same, with the big cheekbones where they fill you up. It's much cheaper to have a fringe - it takes years off everybody.
Any consideration of the story we call 'Cinderella' for simplicity's sake must acknowledge that 'Cinderella' has had a dizzying array of personae over hundreds of years, in several cultures. There is no one authoritative tale of 'Cinderella,' only a hall of mirrors with a different face in each reflection.
You get an image in the first couple of years of your career, and then whether you like it or not, you are stuck with it for the rest of your life.
It took me years to actually get comfortable on the stage. I prefer the intimacy of screen; it comes easier to me. In theater, you have to be louder and bigger - that was harder for many years in my teens. But now I've conquered that. I eat up the stage. I love it.
I experimented with my own one-man show a couple of years ago in Aspen when HBO used to have their comedy festival there. I called it 'A History of Me.'
Women are smarter by basic instinct and by what we have to do to multitask at home and at work. My mother did that 50 years ago, but it wasn't called multitasking or stress back then. She had a job, two kids and the meals to make with no cook or maid. My father would come home every day and expect lunch. He was a nice guy, but he was clueless!
A lot of artists have really been supportive over the years.
Several years ago, I was asked by a songwriter's association to go to Nashville - I think it involved some kind of award - and be part of the showcase. It was myself and Stevie Winwood and Michael McDonald and then some country people that I didn't know. The whole community was just so welcoming to me.
In the years since I worked with John Hughes, there were many years where I literally had hundred of doors slammed in my face because I wasn't that kid anymore, and I wasn't a character actor, and I wasn't a leading man, and I wasn't whatever Hollywood was looking for.
It's sad to see such institutions as 'All My Children' and some of the others, like 'Guiding Light,' which have been on the air for, like, 40 or 50 years. It's almost unfathomable to see that they actually aren't going to be on the air anymore. It's really sad.
After a generation of misrule under Mr. Hussein, who built a huge military infrastructure while neglecting civilian investment, and a dozen years of United Nations sanctions, Iraq's unemployment rate tops 50 percent.
I am grateful to have spent 25 years at the 'International Herald Tribune' - a newspaper where I had unstinting support in being able to express myself freely and honestly.
Education was a given, only because of the way I was raised. Truth be told, I thought, at 15 years old, I should go and get a record deal and drop out of school, and my parents would have had none of that. I'm grateful now that my parents were pushing me in that way, because I wasn't mature enough on so many levels to do that.
When I was 15 years old, my cousin and I formed a singing group called The Altaires. And, because we became the most popular singing group in the Tri-State area, the rest of the group convinced me I should play the guitar - even though I didn't own one! So what happened was, my stepfather actually made my first electric guitar for me for $23!
Unbeknown to me, my manager, under my very nose (in a crouching position) has all these years been secretly compiling a book from my correspondence. I often wondered what she was doing in my office. She never did a stroke of work for me. All the time, I have been working for her.
Democracy is not the end point of mankind. There may be developments in many different directions in the coming centuries. Democracy has only existed for about 200 years. It started out with the American Declaration of Independence. The Americans got their ideas from the Europeans, in the main from the French, the Dutch and the British.
I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.
I always take care to have interesting chord progressions, because you can have the best sound design in the club, and you'll kill it in the club, but in five years, kids will have better sound design. But if your music is good, you'll always be able to listen to it, even in 20 or 50 years.
