We started to have more women and little girls in our audience, where it started to be 40 percent female that sat in our live audience. So I think, when that was happening and the women were stepping up and saying, 'Hey we can do what the men do,' and then you saw it on a reality show, it was just inevitable for us to have this women's evolution.
If something were brought about without an antecedent cause, it would be untrue that all things come about through fate. But if it is plausible that all events have an antecedent cause, what ground can be offered for not conceding that all things come about through fate?
I have photographs taken of me at the time I was addicted, and thought I looked good. I see them today and realize my eyes were dead.
It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.
I'm sure if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be doing classic guitar solos on YouTube.
Nobody... took me seriously. They wondered why in the world I wanted to be a chemist when no women were doing that. The world was not waiting for me.
When we were children, we were told that we have a motherland, and that motherland was Spain. However, we have discovered later, in our lives, that as a matter of fact, we have several motherlands. And one of the greatest motherlands of all is, no doubt, Africa.
From the point of the view of the nation's power, it was obvious that while we were fighting the Sino-Japanese war, every effort was to be made to avoid adding to our enemies and opening additional fronts.
Imagine how many people would not vote if they knew they were being recorded while they voted.
The Olympics were produced absolutely the same way from 1960 through 1988. It was always the Western World against the Eastern Bloc. You didn't even have to spend one second developing the character of any of the Eastern Bloc athletes. It was just good guys and bad guys.
20th-century totalitarian movements were no more defined by a rejection of Judeo-Christianity than they were defined by a rejection of astrology, alchemy, Confucianism, Scientology, or any of hundreds of other belief systems.
When I was a teenager, what I most wanted to read were fantasy novels. Not Tolkien and Malory, but sword-and-sorcery pulp. I craved glowy blue magic, chainmail bikinis, dragons with unpronounceable names.
When my father left us, my mother went back to school immediately. She went to school in the day while we were at school, and she worked at night. She worked very hard to never let someone define her as a victim or a failure.
The British soldiers serving in Afghanistan alongside Prince Harry were in exceptional danger until he was withdrawn.
I come from a very musical family. My dad taught me to play guitar. I play violin and drums as well. Violin, I started in elementary school. Drums actually came when I was in a program called 'Rock Star,' which was really awesome. We were doing a song by the Ramones, so I thought, 'Why not play the drums?'
When you go to a site, you usually run into usability problems pretty quickly. They're not hidden. They're not complicated. They're not baffling. They were in the design or crept into the design.
With 'Sin Nombre,' there are parts that I wish were longer. And with 'Jane Eyre' especially, there were parts that I had to compress that I thought it would have been really nice to spend more time with - to spend with the characters.
People were hurt, and because they were hurt, they were angry and quarreled and were jealous of one another.
All the books I was reading as a teenager were about individuals having adventures. So I thought that was what writers were supposed to do: to go out on the road.
I learned that the songs that mean the most to me are the songs that I write by myself. While there were people I wrote really well with, particularly Gary Nicholson and Delbert McClinton, and I really enjoyed the experience, I came away from it feeling like I need to write by myself.
Growing up in the Libya of the 1970s, I remember the prevalence of local bands who were as much influenced by Arabic musical traditions as by the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. But the project of 'Arabisation' soon got to them, too, and western musical instruments were declared forbidden as 'instruments of imperialism.'
Probably half the cases of Civil War dead were not identified. And so there was no way to let loved ones know, and there were no regularized processes in either Northern or Southern Army for notifying next of kin.
Back in 1975, we were making all the decisions about what people were going to watch.
It may sound amazing to people today, but Rodgers and Hammerstein were considered by - how can I put it? - the sort of opinion-making tastemakers and everything to be 'off the scale as sentimental.'
Our morality is based on so many factors: of where we were born, who we were born to, what values were instilled in us, what values we chose, the way that our lives have shaped us. That dictates so much of what we assume is our morality, and also the culture, all of these things.
I made some choices that weren't right in the past. It cost me in terms of my confidence and everything.
Growing up in Europe, tight clothing is pretty standard. When I got to college, clothes were loose, so I was going toward more loose stuff. As soon as I got back to New York, I started wearing suits 25% of the year. Then, I realized how important it is for the suit to really fit you and be tight.
When I was general director of City Opera, we were pioneers in the practice of projecting supertitles so that American audiences finally could know what all the singing was about.
For Bobby and I to sing R&B and sound black was probably the stupidest thing we could do. White radio stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were black. Black stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were white. Any time you break ground, you go against the grain.
If you ask any of us which movie we were making when one of our kids was born, we'll be able to tell you instantly. It's like our family lives are permanently woven into the movies.
Acting coaches in Hollywood were always telling me to use my hands and body more. But that was never me. I just breathe and sometimes it doesn't look as if I'm doing that.
I think I had a lot of people who were like, 'Payal, we love you, but product's not there,' or 'business is not there.' I never gave up, though.
Although we were never pals and occasionally butted heads, my relationship with Clinton and his wife, Hillary, made me a better journalist.
We've been co-evolving with our technology for a hundred thousand years. Human beings and the technology we make were always inseparable. We're finally coming into this moment where it's coming inside our body for the first time in history.
Email helps me keep in touch with my family. I wouldn't know what my extended family was doing every day if we weren't emailing each other.
I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.
