I write because I have always been curious about what it would feel like to be someone else, in a different situation. Fiction is a wonderful way of exploring that.
My father was a great sympathizer of Ahad Ha'am. Every Friday night we would read Hebrew together, and often the reading was Ahad Ha'am's essays.
At an everyday level I would reckon myself more than fortunate.
I would say my first golf memory was asking who Arnold Palmer was when he was always on the Pennzoil commercials. When I was a little kid I watched a lot of sports, but I didn't watch a lot of golf, and this guy was always on a tractor.
Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs.
I would definitely stay in the business, be behind the camera maybe.
If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.
When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, 'Don't get comfortable, because we may not be here long.'
I think three or four years ago, people would have said my biggest weakness was that sometimes I was awkward on television, with my stammer, but I think they'd say that much less now.
Would you allow a people to come from somewhere else and occupy a part of the United States, and set up an independent state, and, after 50 years, you would not be able to stay on this land?
The success of 'Take Me To Church,' I never imagined it. I never imagined that it would work on radio, that it would find its way onto the charts, even at home and certainly not in America.
I would like to have the original ending to my Lord of the Rings instead of the one they released. In my original cut I had the victory at Helm's Deep as the final sequence.
I think the audience would like to see movies that are stunning to watch. I really think they'd like to see spectacles.
At the zoo, people would gather around the railway to see the snakes being fed, and my brothers would walk around the group, taking from purses or bags or using a razor to cut pockets and take wallets.
I still think that if the human race, or even one nation, could only get right about its God the rest would follow.
We have a lot of rookies in the lineup. More than anybody, I would say. Its going to be something new for them. They have to understand that it's totally different hockey in the playoffs. Starting with the fans, the intensity of the game, every mistake counts.
I never have time to myself; it's the one thing about my life I would probably hope to change.
Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience.
If there were a bunch of Buddhist or Hindus or Roman Catholics carrying out grotesque acts of international terror, I would expect to see their faces on the side of bus.
Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!
If I had some idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?
Because some people have sex with people of the same sex, an entire culture has been created, broadly speaking, out of oppression. Which in a rational world would not be an issue.
The general reactions were that the video was either not going to load, or be painfully slow to load, or would require a plug-in users didn't have. YouTube changed that, because it just works.
There's an evolution from, today we tell computers to do stuff for us, to where computers can actually do stuff for us. For example, if I go and pick up my kids, it would be good for my car to be aware that my kids have entered the car and change the music to something that's appropriate for them.
If I wouldn't offend my religion or God, why would I want to offend an audience because in effect those people are being watched over by the same person.
I was never a big guy in pubs. I was never the main kind of aggressor or anything like that, but I found myself in trouble because I always had a mouth that would come back with something, and there was just never anyone who could make me be quiet.
I wasn't a kid who moved out from Iowa with aspirations of becoming a famous star - I was intrigued by the idea of filmmaking and by the idea of what it would be like to play a character in a movie.
If Frank and The Beach Boys got together and did a Super Session album, it would be a gas.
I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evening. Businessmen would achieve better results if they studied human metabolism. No one works well eight hours a day. No one ought to work more than four hours.
I often wonder, with my hand on my heart, if 'The Dying Hours' was made into the biggest movie franchise in history, would I pick up my pen again? Wouldn't I be happier spending the rest of my life travelling around with my wife?
There have been times when I have goofed up, and like every adolescent, I sometimes did get led the wrong way. I would come back home really scared to face my mom's wrath and anger, but surprisingly, I never got to face one. She would always tell me in a very nice manner that what I did was wrong and that I should correct myself.
Decades later I would look into my father's eyes and try to reach past the murkiness of Alzheimer's with my words, my apology, hoping that in his heart he heard me and understood.
I know too that we Americans like to think of ourselves as cleaner than clean, a healthy nation who would never take anything when a recent poll suggested that 65 per cent of the population would risk dying in 10 years if they would be guaranteed Olympic gold.
I look back at the looks I've had over the years. I'm proud of myself that I had the courage to experiment with crazy hairstyles and some fashion things. Would I do it again? No. But that's part of the learning process and getting from point A to point B.
I think JR would make a better President than the one we have now.
It would be simply suicidal to French Canadians to form a party by themselves.
