By the time of the Civil War, there were many kinds of apples growing across the United States, but most of them didn't taste very good, and as a rule, people didn't eat them. Cider was cheaper to make than beer, and many settlers believed fermented drinks were safer than water. Everyone drank hard cider.
We should have scant notion of the gardens of these New England colonists in the seventeenth century were it not for a cheerful traveller named John Josselyn, a man of everyday tastes and much inquisitiveness, and the pleasing literary style which comes from directness, and an absence of self-consciousness.
Let's say we were a peacekeeping force in some small country that most people had never heard of. And we were there to host a peaceful election, and we then found out a bunch of stuff was hacked. We probably would push to have another election to make sure that would be fair.
Artists take on an alias that's suitable for their style of music. Everyone had a nickname when they were younger.
I noticed in the late 1990s that my friends and I were already nostalgic for the 1980s, and by the turn of the century, VH1's 'I Love the '80s' gave all of us an accelerated nostalgia for our generation.
If a man were living in isolation his income would be literally his product. Make him the monarch and owner of an island, and the fruits that he raises and the clothing that he makes constitute, in themselves, his income. This ceases to be true when trading begins.
I love those kids on 'The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.' I remember when they were little they looked like they were having so much fun just being kids. And that's how I was growing up and how I try to be.
'The Unsinkable Molly Brown' was my favorite for me to be in because it was all dancing. There were other musicals that I made with Donald O'Connor and Gene Kelly that were wonderful pictures, and we had a lot of fun making them.
There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you'd had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting; and who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childhood goes with her.
When I talk about my artist parents, people imagine a bohemian environment and think, 'Aha, so that's where he gets it from!' But we were as white, straight, and middle-class as the next family on our white, straight, middle-class housing estate.
I thought the Secret Service would protect me from the press, but they were at my house to protect me from assassins with guns, not with assassins with pencils.
I am not Shakespeare or Hemingway, but I have written stories on tennis that were brilliant.
Harper Collins gave me a letter of intent saying that they want me to pen down my autobiography. When I was recollecting the incidents of my life for that, I selected only those incidents which were turning points in my life. I staged it instead of writing it.
My cash cows, the slick magazines, were put out of business by TV.
I was eccentric, even as a kid. I was an early reader, an early talker. I was very curious in a way that maybe the other kids weren't. I was a little more outgoing.
From an early age my mother told me that there were so many of us that if I was to get anything in life I would have to get it myself. So I did.
What bothered me was playing one-dimensional parts in films which were really about, 'Boy Meets Girl,' 'Will Boy Get Girl?'
I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature.
If you're sick, take your sick day. If you don't take your sick day, know what your reward is? You weren't sick - that was the reward.
History is full of examples of regimes that were oppressing at home and aggressive abroad, and I can't think of too many liberal democracies engaging in counterfeiting, drug running, missile proliferation, and just about any other illegal activity you can think of as North Korea does.
We were excited to win, staying undefeated is just the icing.
I'm Jewish, but not overly religious, and have certainly never formally observed the Fourth Commandment, other than via the tradition of wearing white on Friday nights at summer camp, which never seemed to dovetail with the fact that Fridays were also the night for grape juice.
As for Aliki - if you were to stand in the middle of Rome and say the name Sophia Loren, or Paris and say the name Catherine Deneuve or Brigitte Bardot, or L.A. and the name Marilyn Monroe, it's like standing in Athens, or anywhere in wide-flung Greece, and saying Aliki Vougiouklaki. A huge star - and so little known elsewhere in the world.
The Beatles were basically a vocal band.
My wife didn't like Hollywood or its stars, but she made an exception when, in 1972, we were invited to dinner - cooked by Frank Sinatra.
When I look back I can't believe how my parents managed, but the cliche is true. We didn't have money, but we were rich in so many other ways.
I was into all kinds of music as a teen - country music, because my dad was in a band that played country, and whatever my sister and brother were into.
After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.
Most liberals I know were for invading Afghanistan right after 9/11.
Overall, we think religion is a good thing. I mean, if we were godless society, we would have many other problems; the communists found that out.
I had a very simple life growing up in the farm country outside of Perugia, and biscotti and warm milk with a tiny bit of coffee were a big part of my morning ritual before walking to school.
My mother always took my brothers and me to music lessons. There were six children. Our parents attended our concerts and encouraged us to study and enjoy many different types of music.
And the two planes that were taking the band and crew that we had taken out to San Diego were flying out after the show. And so I was never supposed to be on that plane.
Around 10, I got chubby. I knew I'd crossed a line when the only pants that fit were from the 'Junior Plenty' line at JC Penny. My parents had split up, my mom was going through a dark time, and my brother and I were getting bullied in our new neighborhood. Life was big and unsafe.
My mom was a little weepy. My dad was very logical about it. Once they realized you can't change, they wanted to know that you can be happy and be gay. Once they realized that, they were very cool about it.
Like children all over the world, by the age of 10 I'd come to believe that most of the really humane creatures were not really human at all.
