When I was 13, I auditioned for the theater school, and I was there for four years. In the meantime, I did my first three movies, all in Cuba.
I always thought that people who live in the desert are a little crazy. It could be that the desert attracts that kind of person, or that after living there, you become that. It doesn't make much difference. But now I've done my 40 years in the desert.
'Animal Ark', was when I was fourteen years old, and it was an ITV children's program, and I did an episode called, 'Bunnies in the Bathroom.' And I'm not sure if it was my finest hour.
I was given a thick paperback copy of the 'Guinness Book of Records' when I was 11 years old, and I read it gluttonously, cover to cover, paying special lip-smacking attention to all the incredibly gruesome chapters about the violence of human history.
I'm certainly really rather tall at 6 foot 3, and I've been this way since I was 14, but for years, women who are even 5 foot 10 have come up to me in the street and said, 'Oh, it's so nice to see a woman who is taller than me. I've always felt like a giant.'
For instance, it's a little better now than it was two or three years ago, but something like 70% of the poems I receive seem to be written in the present indicative.
The idea of Twitter started with me working in dispatch since I was 15 years old, where taxi cabs or firetrucks would broadcast where they were and what they were doing.
Our small ears never had such a workout as on the Fourth of July, hearing not only our own bursting crackers but also those of our friends, and often the boom of homemade cannon shot off by daring boys of 16 years, ready to lose a hand if it blew up.
To be honest, we spent many years at Warner, and in the very beginning, there was a very passionate team that worked alongside us on a daily basis. Every year that went by, we would lose just about every single person that worked directly with us, to the point that I honestly couldn't have picked up a phone and gotten one person who knew me.
I really love standup because it's something that I've been literally doing for 40 years, which means I'm a thousand years old.
I'm definitely of the 'Harry Potter'-transfigured-me-into-a-reader-and-writer generation. And that's really all I read throughout my teen years, because I really devoted all my time to writing and reading friends' fan-fiction.
I was socially awkward for many years. I stuttered, stammered, talked rubbish. I never take up invites to parties, and I've been invited to very glamorous things, but I never go.
Little Steven - the songwriter, producer, and arranger - stayed alive doing the 'Lilyhammer' score. That pretty much took up three or four years of my life, and all of my musical energy went into that.
Nobody can doubt Puerto Rico, sociologically, linguistically, culturally, and historically, is a nation. We have our own rich culture, thousand years of history, unique territory, and almost everyone's first language is Spanish, not English.
In truth, I barely knew my father at all. He was 53 when I was born, and when I was ten he contracted cancer. Eight years later, in 1979, he died.
In 1995, I proposed the Harvard Arts Medal. The idea was to celebrate the fact that, although it's rare, Harvard men and women do go into the creative arts. Over the years we've had major, major figures, like Jack Lemmon, John Updike, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bonnie Raitt.
It couldn't be more satisfying to work on something almost anonymously for years, then to have it received affectionately with support.
We regard those other cultures, such as that of India, where many people live and believe and behave much as they did 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, as undeveloped.
In 25 years of exile, I've never had a frozen account, either in Switzerland or elsewhere in the world.
I don't invest in companies where my mental model is that they need to get themselves acquired in the next few years - or ever.
I would say that the money that was invested in me by Warwickshire Education Authority, which they did for five years, has been repaid a hundred times over. I have paid a lot more back to them in tax than they paid in support to me, but they helped me on my way - they launched me; they got me going.
You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the 'Encyclopedia Africana' would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution.
When I was a reporter in Bristol, which I was between the years 1954 and 1960, the newspaper would get tickets for whoever showed up to play a gig at the big hall down the road, so I saw some wonderful people. The Everly Brothers, for example.
If you're in pop music, you've got to deal with the changing of the guard every few years. By the time the '70s arrived, I was well aware of the cyclical nature of the game. Pop music is a creature of the moment; it thrives on the mood of its time. Either you hook into that or you're not going to be part of it.
I've really enjoyed my three years at 'Hollyoaks.' I worked with the most amazing people.
As a journalist for 35 years, and now author for 20, I've learned that there's always more.
If I have learned nothing else in all my years here, my biggest lesson is you have to constantly reinvent this company. That's how you get to be 103 years old.
I have been a print reporter my whole career. It's all I ever wanted to be. I specialize in political profiles. I have probably profiled hundreds of people over the years, people in very powerful positions. People don't always like what I write, but most people still talk to me.
If you're a good Amish girl, you're courting, you have three or four different beaus, and you go out and stay out all night. That's just their tradition. They date under the covering of night. No one knows who they're dating or seeing until two weeks before they're going to be married. It's how they've done it for 300 years.
I lived for two years in Odawara, a castle town an hour outside of Tokyo, near the sea. It's a beautiful place, and I drew on my experiences there when writing 'The Lake of Dreams.'
At 14, 15 years old, I started reading 'Backstage' regularly. Eventually, I got enough courage to look at the auditions section.
For years, I've been interviewed, and they write what they thought I thought or what they thought I said. Sometimes it's accurate, and often it isn't.
I wanted to be a writer that had an impact. I wanted, and still I say the same thing, I want to write books that change people's lives, change how we think and live and read and write. I wanna write books that are read in 50 or 100 years.
I think they have not learned over the years that the more you talk, the more I will want to beat you.
When you try to master the emotions of a decision and say, if you're 50 years from now and you look back, 'Did we take the right decisions?' Then the decision becomes a lot easier.
China's one-child policy was born in 1980, after years of less severe measures to discourage births. The Communist Party promised that the policy would be temporary.
