I borrowed a creaky laptop from my husband, went into the web, and never came back.
One night I was standing on Third Avenue playing my guitar, when this big Irish policeman came strolling by, and stopped to listen to my singing and playing. When I was done, he politely handed me a ticket for disturbing the peace, while at the same time telling me how much he liked my voice. I wish I still had that ticket.
Writing my novel 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North,' I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that grim line of horror in 1943.
I've started several small businesses myself and know that it is tough out there for the little guy in the global economy. I came to the conclusion that, oftentimes, the best thing the government can do for small business is to stay out of the way.
I was part of a group called Casanova Fly, doing bouncer work, attending college and working in a pizza shop when I first met producer Sylvia Robinson who came into the pizza shop where I was flipping the dough. I was rapping in the park in Englewood, and she heard about what I was doing.
My final historical romance came out December 2005. While I enjoyed writing medieval romances, I was also dying to write something with more edge.
When I first came to Harvard, I thought to myself, 'What kind of an Indian am I?' because I did not grow up on a reservation. But being an Indian is a combination of things. It's your blood. It's your spirituality. And it's fighting for the Indian people.
I came from a rural background, and I didn't come in contact with a lot of wealthy people.
I know, especially in my family, people's feelings get hurt over the tiniest things. I'm sure that's true in every family. But, for instance, one year, I came a little bit late to Thanksgiving, and I was supposed to bring a salad. And I just brought a bag of lettuce, and put it in a bowl. Five years later, I heard that my mom was incensed.
The doctrine of marriage depends on Genesis being true. If there's an absolute authority, and if God's the Creator, He made one man and one woman. Jesus came and said that marriage is between a man and woman. If Genesis is not true, we're just animals, and marriage is just whatever you want to make it to be.
I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.
I was thinking things had changed: that the next generation of men weren't as institutionally misogynist as the previous were. And then, suddenly, the Internet came along and gave them a platform to voice their feelings anonymously. And boy, did the bile come out.
Think about multicellularity on this Earth. Every living thing originally came from bacteria. So, who do you think made up the rules for how to perform collective behaviors? It had to be the bacteria.
I came back to work when my children were two months old. At that early age, they seem to have little awareness of anybody but their Raggedy Ann dolls, so it wasn't a matter of them missing me. I was missing them.
I used to comfort myself with the idea of a book with serrated, detachable pages, so that you could read the thing the way it came and then shuffle the pages, like a giant deck of cards, and read the book in an entirely different order. It would be a different book, wouldn't it? It would be one of infinite books.
I came into the rap game in 1992; my life was changing, but my group wasn't successful; I also saw the biggest rappers in the world die all of a sudden in the ensuing years, so it was a matter of conquering yourself before you can conquer the world.
Maybe I should mention it: I was not from the beginning mainly interested in papilloma virus; I was mainly interested in infectious agents in human cancer. So papilloma viruses came up as the most likely candidate from my viewpoint.
I've dealt with Hollywood about having my work made into a film or cartoon but nothing came of it. That's not to say I wouldn't like to see something happen.
I painted myself into a corner by writing a whole book on this one period. The summer of 1927 came to an end, but nothing else did - all of these peoples' lives went on.
When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.
People write me every day. It feels like this cycle that keeps giving, because as far along as I get in my happiness and success, hearing other people's stories is a constant reminder of where I came from, where people are, and how much help everybody still needs.
Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination.
When you're involved in those big-budget movies, there's a lot of hype: 'Oh this is gonna be a big hit!' And 'A Christmas Story' wasn't. It came and went and was a big disappointment at the box office.
You know how I came up with the name 'Road to the Super Bowl?' It's an homage to the old Bob Hope - Bing Crosby buddy movies - you know, like 'Road to Zanzibar' or 'Road to Morocco.' Can you tell? All I've done my whole life is go to movies.
I wasn't the most prodigiously talented cricketer in Karnataka, let alone India. Some of my team-mates in my school team could hit the ball cleaner than I do. I had to work through that lack of talent, so to speak, that lack of natural flair. Runs never came easy for me.
Out of all the clubs who were interested, I got the feeling that, deep down, Chelsea showed that they really wanted me. There were lots of reasons I came to Chelsea. They showed a real desire to get me to come here. I didn't have to think about it too much.
We used to live in a world where the price of resources came down steadily, and now the world has changed. You have a great mismatch between finite resources and exponential population growth.
One returns to the place one came from.
My first heartbreak was extreme. I went to Australia for 10 months when I was at school and told the girl I was madly in love with not to come out to see me - and of course, when I came back, she met me at the airport to tell me she'd met someone else.
Broadcasting was something, I don't want to say it came easy, but it's something I'm comfortable doing.
I came to realize in my late 20s that my velocity is not going to grow so I had to learn to utilize what I had.
My stepdad is Bruce Jenner, the Olympian. The first time he came over was like a blind date, and we had show and tell. He took out the gold medal for me and my sisters, and we were like, 'So? Who the hell are you?'
I've been singing my entire life. The guitar came to me later on down the road.
I was worried - I wasn't sure I had the maternal instinct. But the minute my son came out, he was my favorite person on earth. I was crazily in tune with him, and I knew we were going to be fine.
Drama school is fundamentally practical. I didn't write any essays, so I came out with a BA honors degree in acting.
Although I could read before I went to school, and I won the school reading prize at five years old, my early children's stories came from the radio and watching films at a cinema on Saturday mornings in Australia. It wasn't until I was nine years old on a ship returning from Australia that I was introduced to children's books.
