My mom was an opera singer, and she gave up her career to raise a family. But she also taught my sisters how to sing.
When you're asked/told to come to Canberra by your Prime Minister, in the country I grow up in, you obey that.
In the late 1990s, Mugabe's misguided policies sent our economy and agricultural productivity, our country's lifeblood, plummeting into the abyss. To make up for the financial shortfall, his regime attempted to print its way out of the mess, immediately resulting in inconceivable hyperinflation, topping out at 231 million percent.
As we grow up, we're constantly defining ourselves. In my case: Caucasian, male, born in Iowa, live in Boston, Zen Buddhist, good at learning languages. With countless labels, I build up this creation I call my self.
Sometimes it feels like I've been in the business forever, but then other times, it feels like kind of a flash. Growing up, all I wanted to do was sing. All I wanted to do was get on a bus and ride around the country and sing for people and be a household name.
I wish I had been home more when the children were growing up. I missed a lot.
Obama's gift for delivering set-piece oratorical tours de force had special resonance to Americans fed up with a president who could hardly string two words together without a collision of syntax and whose idea of clever was the single entendre.
Brethren, let us mind our own business - that is, the calling the Lord has called us to - to do everything we can to promote the good of the Cause of Truth, and never ask how big we are, or inquire who we are; but let it be, 'What can I do to build up the Kingdom of God upon the Earth?'
I had friendships with two people in my life who, when I attempted to do my habitual behavior of building a case to break up with them, wouldn't allow me to do it. They both said to me, 'I'm not going anywhere.' And that moved me so deeply.
Going up north with the redwoods and driving along the coast, it's got everything, man. It's got the desert, the mountains, and the ocean. It's beautiful.
I've separated my shoulder and my collarbone; I've messed up my knee a million times. I've broken my foot in several places. I've broken my toe a bunch, broken my nose a couple of times, and had a bunch of other annoying little injuries, like turf toe and arthritis and tendonitis. It's part of the game.
I started skating when I was about 10 years old. It was in an alleyway. I picked up my brother's skateboard and stood on it. I started to roll down the alley, and I yelled at my brother asking him how I turn the thing. At the end of the alley, I just jumped off, picked up the board and physically turned it around.
But my father was also the one who told me I needed to clean up my mouth or I'd never find a man. What's very important to him is manners. Show up on time. Always send thank-you letters. He is one of the more thoughtful humans I've ever met. He's a great man and a very good dad.
I have such a rich fantasy life, I can't help it. I do make up a lot of romantic stories in my head.
As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.
It was a natural for me to end up in the theater because I'd done a lot of reading about it.
There is nothing worse than sitting in the make-up trailer knowing that the whole crew are twiddling their thumbs waiting for you to change your hair from straight to curly or up to down. Sometimes it can't be avoided.
The spirit around leaving New York, for me, was that I just felt I needed to do something really outside of my comfort zone. And I really couldn't tell you at the time why I needed to do it. It wasn't like I was running from something dark; it was a desire to shake things up.
I grew up in a household that was very close, very open, and always talking about what was going on with each other.
I ended up losing weight and going through a lot of stuff, but yeah, that is so much of my life and my past. I'm glad that I went through that because I don't think I would be where I am now if I hadn't gone through it. It spills over in most of my love for movies and being alone.
Many of the benefits from keeping terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability.
To me, what I realized when we were doing 'Spinal Tap' - and the four of us wrote that - is, really, the core of that is the relationship with the two guys who grew up together and that strain when the girlfriend comes in. If that wasn't there, it's a very different movie. Then it's just bumbling guys stumbling along.
I used to switch up my cologne every two to three months, get a new wave - Dolce, Versace, Burberry. But Black Orchid, that joint stayed. That's the smell of beauty that stays on you... and girls love Tom Ford.
I don't like to practice; I like spontaneity. When I don't play guitar for a week and I pick it up again, I play better.
Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study - you can get a degree in robotics - and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people's minds.
'Anna Karenina.' I read it in college. I was so engrossed that I couldn't stop reading it and neglected all my other studies. I would go to the library even on nice warm weekends and just lock myself up. I think that was the first time that I felt transformed by a book.
Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.
I went into rehab to save my marriage, but I wound up saving myself.
In 2011, I did an internship in Seven Dials, a junction in London where seven roads come together. I'd given up on writing after multiple rejections for my first novel, and I was starting to consider a career in publishing instead, but Seven Dials gave me such a strong idea for a setting that I couldn't resist picking up my pen again.
I'm living in Beverly Hills. I'm very, very lucky. I wake up every morning and I recognize that I'm blessed.
The feathers have been retired to the London Hard Rock Cafe. I don't obsess about it as much. Also, it's strange - the better physical shape I get in, the less I care about what suit I'm covering myself up in. I'm not really out to flaunt it, but I'm just more comfortable in my own skin.
You cannot have one bathroom. And it don't matter how much you love your wife and everything, 'cause you wind up with no room at all. You just get a little corner, and you've got a toothbrush and your paste and a shaving brush and a razor.
I loved going to superhero films growing up - you come home, and you pretend to be those people, and it ends up informing much of what you aspire to be. And that's what I will say is important about the genre.
I went in, and there, in the front room, a converted bedroom, sat the first radio I had ever seen. The equipment was so bulky that it took up one entire wall of the bedroom. The set, which could send or receive signals, was tuned to KDKA in Pittsburgh, and I remember being completely flabbergasted at the thought of sounds coming from that box.
I grew up in a rural area. I grew up in deep southern middle Tennessee, probably about thirty miles from the Alabama border. There's nothing there, really. And the TV was my link to the outside world. It's what kept me from going into factory employment. It's what made me want to go to college. It was really inspiring.
One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
