My father had owned a ranch when he was younger, in Montana, and he remembered riding his horse across the prairie and seeing some large bones sticking out of the ground. He was enough of a geologist, being a sand and gravel man, to have a pretty good notion that they were dinosaur bones.
We were descended from royalty.
It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.
You know what? I did a lot of things that were deliberate, and they all backfired. I was trying desperately to become Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler, and it did not work for me. I took a lot of leaps that I shouldn't have, traditionally speaking. I paid the price for that. I was not as hire-able for a while. But then I just gave all that up.
Why can't we build orphanages next to homes for the elderly? If someone were sitting in a rocker, it wouldn't be long before a kid will be in his lap.
We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.
I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion.
During the session of the Supreme Court, in the village of -, about three weeks ago, when a number of people were collected in the principal street of the village, I observed a young man riding up and down the street, as I supposed, in a violent passion.
Like I can't cry for myself so I will let this song take all of the things inside I can't let anyone else see and offer it up, as if the sound were some kind of god, and my pain is some kind of sacrifice.
Partying is not a sane way to spend money, but it's fun. When we were young, we did not have a lot of money at all, so I thought, 'If I ever get rich, I'm not going to become one of those boring rich people who doesn't spend money.'
I never wanted to separate from either wife. It was accumulated stress. We had virtually no time to ourselves. After politics we were both working very hard to establish new careers.
I'm proud of the fact that I've taken a lot of big directors, such as Trevor Nunn and Nick Hytner, who were musical virgins, and introduced them to the form.
I have a pirate fetish - I just always thought eye patches were sexy.
Before the camera, you only had secondhand takes - someone had to tell you what they saw or draw a picture of it or sing a song. Because of the camera, sometimes to our horror, we now know everything that happens in the world - things that before we were sheltered from.
Drive-in banks were established so most of the cars today could see their real owners.
When I was 18, I took a trip to Thailand with a friend. We stayed for a month. Bangkok was very raw for a teenager: there were no cellphones, no Internet, and the only music I had with me was this cassette by Liz Phair. I was writing a lot of poetry, and she embodied a talky style of songwriting that I found very accessible.
I feel ashamed of how many houses I've actually crept inside of when they were up for sale. I'm not a snoop, but I love looking and imagining.
I grew up racing off-road trucks. They were on road courses with jumps. I made a name for myself in that style of racing.
We sought out and visited all the Indians hereabouts that we could meet with, in number about twenty. They were chiefly in one place, about a mile from where we lodged.
We've been so preoccupied with getting the government to behave in a fair and democratic way, we were not able to focus on the private sector where most of the jobs are, where most of the wealth and opportunities are.
Her blue eyes were still beautiful, but they did not know what was before them, and Mary herself could never look through them again to tell Laura what she was thinking without saying a word.
But if you look at WorldCom, which is the biggest failure to date, they grew dramatically, they were buying companies that were bigger than they were and they were doing it off inflated stock.
Family time was very difficult when my girls were little, but I never missed a birthday; I was there for every major event.
Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction.
Twilight - a time of pause when nature changes her guard. All living things would fade and die from too much light or too much dark, if twilight were not.
What we were in on, really, was the invention of animation.
People were confused by me, and at first I was auditioning a lot for the crazy characters or the victim, someone who'd been attacked. Which is great, because usually those are the best acting roles.
So slowly in my mind formed the idea of melodrama, a form I found to perfection in American pictures. They were naive, they were that something completely different. They were completely Art-less.
At this point, if I were to psychoanalyze myself, I'd have to say I am a clown, cleverly disguised as a regular person.
I grew up knowing only war, so for me, it was the way things were. It wasn't pleasant by any means.
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.
When they were in Papua New Guinea, God just totally grabbed a hold of Will's heart and totally changed him. And within three months he was saved and he's never looked back since.
When you make an exploitation film, you always want to have a real issue. That's how they were always done.
We're downtown New Yorkers and had very close proximity to the events of September 11th. Like everybody on the island of Manhattan, we were impacted by it in so many ways in terms of what we saw, what we felt, what our daily experience became in the wake of it.
Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was alright for people to come and go as they please, that there were simply no real obligations left.
I was forever changed by my experience on 'Once and Again.' All of us who were on that show have deep connections... familial connections.
