There were some jobs I wanted that weren't necessarily right for me at the time. The ones I thought I'd never get, I got. As long as I am doing the best work I can possibly do at any given time, I can't do any better than that.
I walked out of the show business in 1968 because I thought that would be good for the family. It took me some time to decide but I wanted to spend more time with my wife and two daughters who were always beside me. I wanted to do everything I could for them.
If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren't my fans anyway. I couldn't betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to.
The American education system couldn't be more badly directed or poorly funded if the Secretary of Education were Ed Wood.
Cheney, Rumsfeld - they were Shakespearean in their attitude of impunity.
The once inviolate frame within which programs or commercials were displayed on television - always separately - has been violated to a pulp. Program content is seen increasingly as a mere backdrop on which ads are posted like billboards on a fence.
Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship.
Here we were, corrupting all those Russians toward communism.
No matter what side of an argument you're on, you always find some people on your side that wish you were on the other side.
There were a lot of gifted amateurs in my day. Most of the kids now play fantastically well. I think there are so many bands around now who might get there, but it's a tougher journey.
He wasn't really Method but he believed that when you did a role there were lots of things you could do with your co-star in order to create the right environment. You known, if you were supposed to be in love, to create that feeling between the two of you.
I knew who Buckley and Vidal were growing up, being a political junkie.
I was born and raised in the Midwest, where people were taught that decency and integrity and community were all important values. We were democrats with a little 'd.'
Instead, there were a variety of controls of which some could be influenced by bankers, some could be influenced by the government, and some could hardly be influenced by either.
As a spiritual person, nature for me has always been a healing place. Going back all the way to my childhood on the farm, the fields and forests were places of adventure and self-discovery. Animals were companions and friends, and the world moved at a slower, more rational pace than the bustling cities where I'd resided my adult life.
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Murphy's First Corollary If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.
Bobby Darin was one of the first to take black musicians on the road with his band, and there were places that didn't want him to play, and he stood up to it.
I used to be a professional kiteboarder. People were like, 'Oh, my God, are you scared of sharks? Are you scared of injuries?' You can't be scared. If you're scared, then you can't do it. You can't train to be the best.
Human inertia makes the everyday environment, the furniture, as it were, appear to be a given.
I really pulled back on my career when the kids were young and my husband and I made a pact never to work while the other one was.
My father worked hard, but we were still very poor; and I didn't want anybody arguing about money, so I became the entertainer - the one who wanted everyone to be happy. I didn't want there to be any problems.
Us investigators who went out into the field were faced on occasion with a lot of anger, by people saying why has it taken you five or six year to come and see me?
I think that my vampires in general were influenced by my being allowed to watch the Hammer vampire films. Vampire Circus, also shown as Circus of Fear, was one of those movies.
Back then, it was more or less we couldn't change a line in our script. We weren't allowed to change lines. Today, actors change everything and won't do parts. It's very different today. Back then, the producers were in charge. Today actors are more in charge.
I think most people who were involved with television will tell you, if given a season or given a 13-episode order and getting those episodes on the air, and if viewers don't come, I think most people will tell you they'd walk away. They feel they were given a fair shake, and if viewers didn't come, they didn't come.
I was reading through endless junk scripts that were being sent my way. Typically the roles were to play his wife or his girlfriend - leading roles for women were few and far between.
If my kids were to make a talking doll of me as a mother, one of my recorded phrases would be 'I will throw that in the trash.' 'If you don't put that down right now, I will throw that in the trash.' It's very funny to hear myself say certain things - like noticing which phrases become the most popular to use.
Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was to force immorality to be discreet. This is no small contribution.
I was always cutting dialogue out when we were rehearsing, and when I produced movies, too. I felt that people don't say things in life - they act, they do things. I always wanted my characters doing, rather than saying what they were doing - which was redundant.
When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.
By the time my first album was out, I had been out in Jamaica three or four years, but I had hits out at that time that were bona fide hits.
If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose love would follow me still Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.
When I was a kid, I hated being talked to as a kid. I don't know if all kids feel that way, but I seem to remember awful things in the crib, something like people doing baby talk in the crib and sticking their big, fat faces in there and scaring me. So I always talk to kids as if they were a person.
In an ideal world, you might imagine that scientific papers were only cited by academics on the basis of their content. This might be true. But lots of other stuff can have an influence.
Basically, books were a luxury item before the printing press.
