I not only couldn't read but often couldn't hear or understand what was being said to me - by the time I'd processed the beginning of a sentence, the teacher was well on her way through a second or third.
The real story of the Ground Zero mosque is that the project only became feasible because of the appalling and astonishing fecklessness of the officials who were charged with the reconstruction of the site and the neighborhood all the way back in 2001.
I'm working on bridging the gap between mainstream famous and Internet famous. They're two different things, but eventually, social media will be the way to become a celebrity.
I loved September 12th. I loved the way - it's awful but, boy, did I love that day when we all came together. All the bickering stopped. All the partisan, cheap partisan warfare stopped.
There are some actors that are so gifted, that move you in such a way that every time you see their names again, you go and pay another ticket because you want to have that experience again.
My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely.
Sometimes when I'm really enjoying a book, I'll read a sentence or paragraph and just think - how can someone's head be wired in such a way that they'd come up with that?
I grew up in a bit of a feminist fantasy with a single mom. I was totally shielded, in a way, from an idea that I couldn't do something.
I know April, May and June are a few unbearable months, and working out in a gym and sweating in such dirty hot, sticky, humid weather puts me off. The best way is to swim. I feel so fresh and rejuvenated after swimming, and I believe it's one of the best mode to fitness during summers.
I don't feel pressure in a negative way. I like pressure. I feel excitement and calm at the same time. No pressure, no diamonds. I want pressure: pressure creates drama, creates emotion.
I was very much a tomboy. I've always been rather outspoken, headstrong, and I'm pretty much that way to this day.
The tar sands has changed Canada in the same way the fur trade has changed Canada.
Any woman who is currently with a man is with him partly because she loves the way he smells.
I can sit down with my sisters, and they can talk about my body in a certain way, and I will laugh about it with them. That's such a comfortable and loving relationship. But if a stranger I meet in a party makes the same comment, depending on their tone, that's not okay.
Honestly, I have had to live like a high priestess in this show. It is a very, very lonely life. When you work the way I work - that means hard - there's no time for play.
I would say I'm quite happy in my life the majority of the time. Earlier in my life I was more questioning, overly trying to figure things out. I like this way much better.
I love Billy Wilder, and I love the way that his films can be very touching and very moving and very romantic, and at the same time there's always a little cynical undertone, there's always something that undercuts things.
Whenever there were parties, I wasn't invited because I began to be like that character. In a way, that contributed to the success of the performance.
Like everyone, I was a huge fan of David Boies, and from what I knew about him, I thought he might 'get' me. So I sent him an email. I said I want to practice law but that I didn't want to stop writing and I asked if there was any way I could practice law for him.
I fantasised about F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' - I loved it, and then I read everything J. D. Salinger had to offer. Then I was turned on to Kerouac, and his spontaneous prose, his stream of consciousness way of writing. I admired him so much, and I romanticised so much about the '40s and '50s.
Animals, or at least those who are conscious and capable of suffering or enjoying their lives, are not things for us to use in whatever way we find convenient.
I just feel like we as a human race tend to fear that which we don't understand. It's cause for a lot of bad things and bad behavior to exist on the planet. Artists have a way of touching people and changing minds in a way that sometimes other mediums don't.
I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I'd notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings.
One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.
I think the most important thing for your life is the way you interpret things. Having an optimistic point of view is so important - your life will be so bright.
Chris Boardman was my first teammate and my first roommate. I saw him finish his career with an hour record and thought, 'Yeh, what a way to go out!'
Of course there will be disappointments and the way will not always be as I expected it. But if it seemed easy, then that would be the time to worry that I am on the wrong path.
Inside the magic of the comic book universe, it's just people to people, unguarded humanity overlapping and just getting to interact. The way we get our verdict is going to these conventions.
World War II affected the male population in a very detrimental way. They were happy to be home, happy to be alive, happy they won, but they could not express to anybody the horror they had been through.
The way that organizations and organisms anticipate the future is by taking signals from the past, most the time.
People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very interesting sort of thing to go through, and it really helps you out. At the end of the day, it gets you through because you have to reform your relationship, and you have to figure out a way of getting to the future.
My life used to be like that game of freeze tag we played as kids. Once tagged, you had to freeze in the position you were in. Whenever something happened, I'd freeze like a statue, too afraid of moving the wrong way, of making the wrong decision. The problem is, if you stand still too long, that's your decision.
I tend to thrive on being misquoted. It's the only way I sound good.
But if you really want to learn about life, get a cat. The way I think people should relate to animals is with a cat. Because the world is his.
I don't even like to talk Lions too much just because the way our relationship ended.
I don't want to talk about my trials and tribulations. Once you reveal even part of what your real problems might be in life, they come back in a deformed way.
