It's funny, but we were living on this small island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina when I was 9.
The reason why you were allowed to get away with that in the '60s and '70s is because this country's racist administrative policies were such that rich white kids were getting exemptions. I said no exemptions.
But even at the height of these scandals, even at the time when our finances were at their worst, the NAACP branches - the grassroots - kept plugging away. They kept doing what they do, and they do it well.
I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact, they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky, briefly, in the '90s, and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.
How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are forever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected.
Your spikes, which were really quite long then, would catch the material of the track and your shoe would get heavier. I was simply filing them down and rubbing some graphite on the spikes. I thought I would run more effectively.
People were going to geometry class and I was swimming through vats of chili on 'Even Stevens.' It was like a dream!
When I was going to gay bars in my 20s and 30s, the older guys there explained to me that the police would occasionally raid these places and march the clients out, load them onto paddy wagons, drive them down to the station, photograph them, fingerprint them and put their names on a list. They were doing nothing wrong, and it was criminalized.
Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.
Black patients were treated much later in their disease process. They were often not given the same kind of pain management that white patients would have gotten and they died more often of diseases.
When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress?
I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out.
I was studying with Peter Carey, Colum McCann; but also, my fellow students were really critical readers for me.
Early on, they were timing my contract with an egg timer.
The 2000s were marked by terrorism and a bipartisan desire to fight it.
On the one hand, we had great filmic spectacles that brought in big audiences, adults as well as primary and secondary school students. On the other hand, there were attempts to create contemporary Polish film.
While teaching, I also worked undercover in the lower courts by saying I was a young law teacher wanting experience in criminal law. The judges were happy to assist me but what I learned was how corrupt the lower courts were. Judges were accepting money right in the courtroom.
When I went on to write my next book, Working With Emotional Intelligence, I wanted to make a business case that the best performers were those people strong in these skills.
Unlike people of my generation, my children and my grandchildren have grown up living with, knowing, people who were outwardly gay and lesbian. And they have learned that they're just like us... And when you see that they're just like us, the rationale for discrimination melts away.
The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts... his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.
I made a crash landing here on Earth on February 14, 1962, in the Shreveport Catholic Charities Home for un-wed mothers. The infamous Bonnie and Clyde lost their lives just miles from where I was born. Like outlaws ourselves, my birth mother and I were on the run from the day she found out I was part of her.
Being in America isn't old-hat - it's where we're from - but I get excited to be in other parts of the world like Athens and Croatia, which were quite cool. I'm a sightseer. I go see the sights and museums. I'm into that kind of thing.
The early ELP albums were pioneering in a way.
I was painfully initiated into boxing, because the guys I fought were a lot bigger than me.
Previously, young children had to be shown by their parents how to use a mouse or a remote, and the connection between what they were doing with their hand and what was happening on the screen took some time to grasp. But with the iPad, the connection is obvious, even to toddlers.
I ran into a couple of guys who were boxers. They talked me into working out at their gym. I became obsessed with boxing and the idea of becoming a champion.
I don't want to do an action movie, because I've acted in them, and they're so boring to do, because they're so technical. The headache of that is daunting. But, if it were an action movie with really interesting characters, how great would that be?
I remember when my mother, Shyamala Harris, bought our first home. I was thirteen. She was so proud, and my sister and I were so excited. Millions of Americans know that feeling of walking through the front door of their own home for the first time - the feeling of reaching for opportunity and finding it.
I had such a nice time making it, and I can't wait to make the fifth one. The whole crew were just really, really lovely. All the costume people, the make-up girls, the kids - even my driver.
I had this notion that I could convince people who were skeptical of national Democrats to vote for me because I could bring home the bacon, or because I could find some personal pitch to them.
Wealth, in terms of dollars and so forth, could be counted up, because dollars were finite. It doesn't make any difference how many dollars you have-at a certain point you only have dollars. You start with finite, you end with finite.
There were two qualities about the mutual funds of the 1920s that made them extremely speculative. One was that they were heavily leveraged. Two, mutual funds were allowed to invest in other mutual funds.
Sea Hunt was the first time anyone tackled a show that took place underwater. The stories were sort of exciting for kids, like cops and robbers underwater.
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.
It has been possible to trace historically back to a very early age the taxes which were imposed on medicines, spices and similar substances in German towns. Thus, for instance, one finds that in the year 1500, thirteen, in 1540, thirty-eight, and in 1708, already one hundred and twenty vegetable oils are mentioned.
I noted that people are happy here in India. When I went back home, people had everything in the materialistic sense and were surrounded with abundance, but they were not happy.
