'The Glass Menagerie' by Tennessee Williams is a great play. I had to read it for school when I was younger, but I started writing scripts after that. That's what got me into writing.
Who wouldn't want to be wizard, at least for a day, as long as you didn't have the dilemmas and the situations that Merlin was thrown into. I'd be happy if you could actually use the powers to have a bit of fun and do something good for the world and maybe for yourself, whereas Merlin's kind of limited in that he has to look after Arthur.
I can't control life for my grandchildren, so how could I control a story? Sometimes I try to force something, and after working and working on that chapter, I realise that I am swimming against the current. I will never get there. So I have to let go of whatever previous idea I had about it and let the characters decide.
I cannot count the times I've been defeated, humiliated, or physically injured immediately after saying the words, 'Hey, how hard can it be?' But that never seems to stop me from saying them again.
It wasn't until the movie came out that it all changed for us. Some people say it was the start of Ten Years After, but in another way, it was the beginning of the end.
After college, I was living in New York and wrote furiously, a huge novel that I knew was a failure. I hoped that the book would work, but to be honest, I think I knew it would never work, even as I was finishing it.
The starting point for understanding the deterioration in the relationship between the U.S. and Russia lies in Washington rather than Moscow. After 1989, Russia was a defeated power. Despite the fine words and some limited gestures, the Americans have treated it like one. Their policy has been one of encirclement.
I always said, 'Whenever I get pregnant, I'm going to embrace all of the body changes that happen.' My focus has not been on any sort of snap-back or anything like that, because your body won't be the same after giving birth, and if anything, that's something to be celebrated, embraced, and owned.
The three-year-old who lies about taking a cookie isn't really a liar after all. He simply can't control his impulses. He then convinces himself of a new truth and, eager for your approval, reports the version that he knows will make you happy.
I read of the Kalamazoo girl who killed herself after reading the book. I am not at all surprised. She lived in Kalamazoo, for one thing, and then she read the book.
I did a little theatre work after that and the following year I got another part in a television series. Then it was almost to the end of the year before I got more work. That was coming to terms with the reality of the vocation I had chosen.
The gene 'klotho' was named after the Greek Fate purported to spin the thread of life, because it contributes to longevity.
He told me he was working as an interpreter in a doctor's office in Brookline, Massachusetts, where I was living at the time, and he was translating for a doctor who had a number of Russian patients. On my way home, after running into him, I just heard this phrase in my head.
It's nice to be recognized, but it's not great to have it too conspicuously recognized, if you see what I mean. Gold records on the wall, or titles after your name, it's just not something... I don't feel that great about it.
Just as an athlete with natural gifts may fail to develop the fundamental skills necessary to play their sport after their talent fades, so people naturally disposed to faith may fail to develop the skills necessary to sustain them for a lifetime.
Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it.
My criteria when looking for a role is that I will do anything that stands the chance of succeeding on the level it is intended to. After that, if it's a part I can do something personal with.
I left New York after my mother died and, rather aimlessly, had settled in Istanbul for a change of scene. It was a rather dramatic gesture on my part, since I'd lived in New York for 20 years, but I felt I needed something different - the escalating expense and pressure of New York had begun to weary me.
After 60, it's just patch, patch, patch.
At 99 and after a long stay in a nursing home, the death of legendary photographer Eve Arnold was hardly a surprise - though she may have been just a little annoyed to quit a few months short of 100.
The duty of the grand jury is to separate fact from fiction, after a full and impartial examination of all the evidence involved, and decide if evidence supported the filing of any criminal charges against Darren Wilson. They accepted and completed this monumental responsibility in a conscientious and expeditious manner.
Yes, after some time spent last year on other commitments, most of them speaking engagements, I am now about halfway through a novel that I hope will come out in 1998.
I thought they'd get one of us, but Jack, after all he's been through, never worried about it I thought it would be me.
A funeral eulogy is a belated plea for the defense delivered after the evidence is all in.
Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.
The #metoo campaign picked up speed after the actress Alyssa Milano suggested that if every woman simply typed 'me too' on their platform of choice, they might give the world a true sense of the magnitude of the problem. The hope is that safety in numbers might minimize the shame many women feel in admitting that this has happened to them.
I felt fine after 24 hours and asked the state commission to prolong my stay in space to three days. And I carried out the entire schedule. Could I have done that if I had been half-dead?
I couldn't sing to save myself. Greg went to John after the audition and said, 'She's cute, but she can't sing very well' and he said, 'I know. We'll teach her. I just want her on the show'.
With Hitchcock I had little relationship. I was called to replace Bernard Herrmann, his favorite composer, in Torn Curtain, after the bitter fight between them.
If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after.
We fought in 1974 - that was a long time ago. After 1981, we became the best of friends. By 1984, we loved each other. I am not closer to anyone else in this life than I am to Muhammad Ali. Why? We were forged by that first fight in Zaire, and our lives are indelibly linked by memories and photographs, as young men and old men.
The only place we were really told to tone it down - where other people would use the word censorship, but I wouldn't - was when we did MTV right after the Beavis and Butt-head thing.
I played the trumpet for nine years, and then I joined the choir after that, and then I was in musicals in high school.
I'm not anti-immigration.
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
After you do a joke a few times, you have material that you know works. Although sometimes I have a joke that has worked a bunch of times and then one night it'll flop. And that's when I really take a hard look at myself and say: 'Well, that crowd is obviously wrong. That crowd has absolutely no idea what it's talking about.'