I came up in gospel.
Ah, the Wrecking Crew! They played on everything that came out of L.A. Oh, that was a good band. You really enjoyed going to work. You played for everyone; it didn't matter what it was.
My wife and I, unlike many intellectuals, spent five years working on assembly lines. We came to fully understand the criticisms of the industrial age, in which you are an appendage of a machine that sets the pace.
I hadn't ever worked with an 'editor' until I was 26 - although that could be partly chalked up to the MFA vs. NYC thing, where I came up through institutions that encouraged writers to write privately for a long, long time and not sully themselves with concerns about audience or the business side of writing.
Wreckin' Cru was a DJ crew. They used to call it that because it was the guys that came in after the party was over and broke down the equipment. We eventually made a record, and we had the costumes on and what have you. Back then, everybody had their little getups, you know, like SoulSonic Force, UTFO.
A lot of times, you have an idea, and all the things you are thinking about might fuel it. But that's not where the idea came from.
My dad was a journalist. He was in Rwanda right after the genocide. In Berlin when the wall came down. He was always disappearing and coming back with amazing stories. So telling stories for a living made sense to me.
I was born in 1952, so obviously the sixties were important. That's when I came of age. It was also a revolutionary period, a complete break with the generation before us in terms of culture, literature, music, and in politics, of course. 1968 was an important year; I was 16, and the world became clear to me, visible, so to say.
That so many binary or quasi-binary KBOs exist came as a real surprise to the research community.
Perseverance has always just been something that was in me. And it was a tool that came in very handy as a ballerina.
How to get over the river was the bother. At last, after thinking a heap about it, I came to the conclusion that I always did: that the boldest plan is the best and safest.
My family moved to Israel when I was eight until I was 10, and then we came back, and my parents split up. I was suddenly in a single-parent home and on scholarship. Fifth grade was such a hard year for me.
The Exxon Valdez spill triggered a swift and strong response that changed policies about shipping, about double-hulled construction. A number of laws came into place.
But then I came to the conclusion that no, while there may be an immigration problem, it isn't really a serious problem. The really serious problem is assimilation.
I attended seminars where many social issues were discussed abstractly, outside the pressures of an immediate situation, and there I developed certain attitudes which permitted me to face the real thing when it came along.
Even when I was much younger, whatever I did, I wanted to do it to the best of my abilities. When I came home from school, I would be the one doing my homework while my siblings would be watching TV and putting it off until later.
When I was at Cambridge in the early fifties, there was a school nearby for training Army officers in Russian, and some imaginative genius came up with the idea of putting on Russian plays with the students to improve their language skills.
The Founders believed liberty came directly from God. With their knowledge of Scripture, they knew each child was made in the image of God. That is why everyone had dignity, value and worth.
There's a crazy amount of goodwill, and I don't know where it came from, and I don't understand, but the more I pay attention to it, the more it's going to sting when it flips, so I think I'm almost subconsciously cultivating this naivety to it all.
When Kennedy could not get the civil rights bill passed - and he was the big liberal - Lyndon Johnson came in and it got passed, and he was the conservative and the southerner. So sometimes in politics, to get something done, it takes a special kind of knowledge and a special kind of person, but it doesn't always follow the party lines.
At the time I belonged to the socialist party, and Hitler came to power.
Whether it's from the biggest, most powerful city, or from the dinkiest little podunk town, there is a certain attachment and connection, and yes, pride about where you came from.
The thing that upsets me the most is the entitlement of people that will stand with a flag and say to some other people that they need to go back to where they came from. When, in fact, they also would need to go back to where they came from, because you need to go all the way back to the beginning.
So if you're a customer today, the same person who came in to demonstrate the technology for you and helped you architect the solution before you bought it is likely going to be leading the team to help you do the implementation.
There isn't a single artist out there, I'm sure, who wouldn't take the most perfect record deal. If the right record deal came along, like, the perfect deal, we'd definitely take it.
My wife came here at age 8 not speaking a word of English and ended up in the president's Cabinet.
When the first 'Hellboy' series came out, in the same batch of fan mail I got a letter from somebody from the Church of Satan, and I got a letter from a minister, and they both liked it. And I thought, 'What am I doing that I'm making both these guys happy?'
That's when it really came together for me that I was in a Bond film, to have my own spy car!
But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things.
If there was a payment to the bank due, and we needed shoes, she'd get the shoes, and then deal with them guys at the bank. I don't mean she wouldn't pay the bank, but the children always came first.
If we would change the basis and align what is taught in school with what is needed with business... that's where I came up with this idea of 'new collar.' Not blue collar or white collar.
It was definitely some tough moments throughout my life, but I kind of stayed focused and came through the other end of the tunnel.
No one wants life to end. It was bad enough when my last tour came to an end.
We took a plant that was being closed by a big company thinking there was no good use for it, and we came in with a different perspective. We bought some used equipment, as simple as we could.
For me, insomnia was something ordinary, and it came and went for ordinary reasons.
You know the things I went through as a youngster, coming into the business, all the good, the bad and the ugly that came. I'd had a rough life. I grew up single parent. My mom, she was like a father to me.