We see through the eyes of children that they're not talking about race the way we grown folks are. They're not talking about color or how much melanin is in someone's skin.
Every time I start a new novel, it seems like an impossible undertaking. If I tried to do too much too quickly, I would get lost and feel overwhelmed. I have to go slow, and give things a chance to take form and grow.
I am quite a physical chap - I think that's why my waist and physique are pretty much the same as when I was a kid, although my chest is a lot bigger.
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.
I know my parents are really proud of me, and they think I've become successful, so that's nice, but there's still so much I want to achieve in my life.
I've actually become much, much dumber through being married and having these children. I find that I'm not half as sharp that I once was. I can't even help them with their 4th and 5th grade vocabulary and math work at this point.
During my solitude, conflicting thoughts increased; but much exercise of soul had the effect of causing the scriptures to gain complete ascendancy over me.
If I'm not in the dead heat of working on something, I can end up spending tons and tons of time on the Web, and I hate it. I feel the same shame I did in grad school when I was pretty much addicted to reruns of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. I wish someone would make the Web just go away. Just remove it from the earth.
In Canada, we have so much land, so much space, and so few people.
Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.
I've always found when I was captain when other people were doing the talking for me, I didn't need to say as much, and when I did say one or two things, people tended to listen all the more.
I grew up Catholic. My mother is from El Salvador, so my family on her side is Roman Catholic. My father is Protestant, and while he was spiritual, he wasn't much of a churchgoing person. I think it's fairly common for families to be brought up in the mother's religion.
I've learned that I don't need much sleep, and that I am able to really stand up for the things that I think that are important and that there are a lot of people out there who agree with me.
I admired my father very much... at the age of sixteen. But now I see that he was a brutal and cruel man, - but not without remorse, and that was what tortured us, his alternations.
Nothing gets on other people's nerves at the office more than a whistler. And the sad part is, these whistlers don't know they're doing it. Someone should, tactfully, tell the whistler how much it disrupts the office environment.
Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that, along with will, conspires to put words on the page.
I write incredibly slowly. And, on top of that, I spent my entire youth and twenties working like a dog, so one of the things that happened when I finished 'Drown' was that I got busy living. I'd never travelled, I'd never seen anything. So I did as much travelling as my job teaching would allow.
I know a lot of writers who would much rather be writing the Great American Novel, but they've got bills to pay and alimony, and so they take a job at a less-than-reputable paper. You know, you do what you gotta do.
If you're a speech writer for a president, you don't really see all that much of him because there's so many layers between you and him. But with a vice president, it's different.
Money can add very much to one's ability to lead a constructive life, not only pleasant for oneself, but, hopefully, beneficial to others.
If you're a citizen of the State of New York, your kid has as much a right as another kid to an education, and the best education. The money should be distributed equally to all.
I listen to the same things that a lot of my fans do, and I grew up in much the same way they're growing up.
Being a writer usually entails a fairly quiet life. However much travel one might do, however many tours and appearances, the job entails solitude: long hours in libraries, long hours at a desk.
I pretty much make time for that weekly manicure.
I'd always thought that 'NYPD Blue' really would open those doors. While I think it created a much broader template for cable, I don't think it really did that much for network television.
I'm comfortable on the progressive side. But I'm still more pitched at fighting the Right than I am about building a progressive platform for the future. It's fair to say that that conversation doesn't interest me as much.
I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.
If you're trashing your own country, ruining the soils, contaminating the waters and the air, cutting down trees, overfishing the lakes, rivers and oceans, you're not much of a patriot.
The music of Bach is so timeless, so fulfilling. You don't feel like you have to be in front of it. The music has everything, and you are there to find the balance when you conduct. You don't have to give too much of your individuality. It's Bach, so it's dangerous to get in the way.
You find out in life that people really like you funny. So what do you give 'em? Humor. And then if you show them the other side, they don't like you as much. I find, too, that I can hide behind the idiot's mask being funny, and you never see the sorrow or the pain.
Neighborhoods and communities are complex organisms that will be resilient only if they are healthy along a number of interrelated dimensions, much as a human body cannot be healthy without adequate air, water, rest, and food.
There's nothing like sitting in a completely quiet room, and then the strings start up. It's like when you go to the cinema - the first two or three minutes of any film are amazing. Because the screen is so big. The scale. Directors can pretty much do anything for those first few minutes.
I think my mom is kind of this way, too. We're just such strong women. My mom's been through so much, so I think that's where I got it from.
If you go back to the 17th century, scientists generally weren't rewarded much at all for sharing discoveries, and as a result, they conducted a lot of their research very, very secretively indeed.
It's such a long mission and we get to spend so much time in space... we're doing such exciting research. And I don't want to overemphasize the life science research, but as a physician the life science research that we're doing is extremely exciting.
It was so much fun to work with the cast on 'School of Rock'. I was a little nervous because it was my first acting gig, but it was such a great experience.
