I was born in Breslau on October 5th, 1930. At that time, Breslau, now called Wroclaw, belonged to Germany, and only German was spoken there. After the Second World War, Breslau became Polish, and the original German population was almost completely replaced by a Polish one. I have never visited Wroclaw after the war.
One time, I came off stage and a guy named Roman Decare, God rest his soul, he was a comic. 'Louie, if you do that family stuff, and you're a clean comic on stage, you'll become famous.' And, for some reason, a switch clicked, and I started doing the family stuff, and it became a giant part of my life.
I know about the sweet home. I went to school with 'em boys, what became Lynyrd Skynyrd; I knew Allen Collins, the skinny girl-beautiful guitarist. I put Allen Collins in every travel piece I do. Travel writing is harrowing, going to Bermuda with a banjo on my knee.
I grew up in a family of piano players. Both my sisters were serious players, and they both, as they became more accomplished, aspired to buy a Steinway and asked my dad to buy a Steinway.
Countries have lost their culture because what they wanted was money. Money became the running theme in every country and culture was sacrificed.
I don't condemn anyone for making their choices. If someone chooses those roles, fine. But not for me. When someone stops me and says, You're the reason I became an actress, that lets me know I made the right decision.
As the years went by I became a writer and illustrator, although exclusively of fantasies.
I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.
During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions.
I grew up with baseball; I played in Little League and went to games with my dad. But I, as I grew up, became more of a basketball fanatic than a baseball one.
Most sketch aficionados have an enormous amount of respect for 'Mr. Show.' I didn't have HBO back then, so I was always trying to find episodes. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross became celebrities, and Jay Johnston - who's lesser known, but brilliant - deserves a lot of credit, too.
I did some acting in college. But then everything stopped when I was a junior, in the fall of 2001, when I started becoming religious. Once I became a full-on Hasidic, I stopped everything. I stopped music. I stopped acting.
I didn't really like opera. I liked cheerleading and boys and, later, smoking. So my opera career was cut short when I was 15. My dad got sick, and we couldn't afford the lessons, so I stopped and became a cheerleader and wrecked my voice.
I had never written anything. And I had never studied writing. So my motives were pure: I had a great story... a courtroom drama that I sort of fictionalized, and that became 'A Time to Kill.'
I became a children's author by accident.
It may come as a surprise, but Frou Frou was really like a kind of little holiday from my own work. Guy and I, we have always worked together, and then over the years, it became clear that we wanted to do a whole album together. It was very organic and spontaneous - just one of those wonderful things that happens.
Growing up sucks, doesn't it? I understand why people wouldn't want to get old - but it'd be one thing if we became a culture obsessed with eating right, doing yoga, going to therapy and becoming at one with ourselves. That be great. But we don't do that. We seem to be obsessed with all the wrong ways to stay young.
I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn't want them either, so it worked out well.
My first movie ever was 'Breaking Away.' I stumbled into an incredible part in a movie that was incredible to be a part of. Peter Yates, the director, became a lifelong friend. He sort of plucked me from obscurity and gave me a life.
I was a film-directing major at NYU. I'm still not sure why I became a directing major, when I was really an actor and a comedian, but there was something that drew me to doing that.
I was the first guest star asked to appear on 'Glee,' which we all know became huge.
Although I started off as a child artist, I left acting in between, as I felt that I was missing the fun of school days. But a little later, I became keen on acting again and started going for auditions.
I had no idea how one became an actor. I didn't know things such as drama schools existed. It all just sort of happened accidentally.
I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.
The instant that movies became described as character driven was the instant when characters stopped mattering in movies. In other words, the birth of the notion of the character-driven movie coincided with the birth of movies in which characters were incidental to the very activities in which they engaged.
I became a war hero before going on to critical acclaim as a professional victim.
In the past goodness was always a collective experience. Then goodness became privatised.
On my teams, as a guy who grew up hunting and fishing, I was in the minority in terms of music and lifestyle. I became good friends with people who listened to R&B and rap. But it wasn't just an issue of being around it - I was naturally drawn to it right off the bat.
I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros.
For lots of people who became rich, they believe they earned their fortune through hard work. They don't think about society and only want to leave their fortune to their children.
Well, I'm a Christian. I was a born a Presbyterian and became an Episcopalian.
When I got into college, I found what ultimately became my life's work. I couldn't sleep at night, I was so excited about it. So I'm attracted to people who play at that level. They actually want to play in their professional life.
She worked hard till she saw all of us through college and we became independent. I never knew that my mother had such a wealth of self-assurance and belief within her.
The new midlife is where you realize that even your failures make you more beautiful and are turned spiritually into success if you became a better person because of them. You became a more humble person. You became a more merciful and compassionate person.
If a patient became sugar-free and blood sugar normal on a basal requirement diet, the caloric intake was gradually increased until sugar appeared in the urine. The tolerance was thus ascertained.
I sat down with a yellow legal pad and began writing 'A Time to Kill.' Had no idea what I was doing. It became, over a period of several years, a secret little hobby nobody knew about except my wife, because she was reading chapter by chapter.
