There were about two years when I literally paid no rent anywhere in the world. Everyone's a contact, but there's no real human interaction. That's a very wearying thing.
What having a Down's syndrome child isn't - and I feel very strongly about this - is a tragedy. All those pregnancy books you read when you are expecting refer to Down's syndrome as if it were the worst possible outcome, and it's not.
I went to Vietnam during the Vietnam War to visit all the troops. We would fly into a hospital and serve mess to the guys, and we ate whatever they were eating. Then we slept there and flew out the next day to little bases where there were maybe 10 or 20 guys. Then we flew to another hospital.
A man never apologizes for the fact that he has to work. He might say, 'Hey, I am so sorry my hours were long today,' but he'd never feel he has to explain the very fact that he has a career. Once I stopped apologizing, I noticed both my kids also stopped complaining and asking me 'why' I worked.
New technologies are rapidly giving rise to unprecedented methods of warfare. Innovations that yesterday were science fiction could cause catastrophe tomorrow, including nanotechnologies, combat robots, and laser weapons.
We decided that sports, lifestyle and fashion were three elements that could be mixed together to a very unique formula. That's what we did: make Puma a very sports-fashion brand when, at the times, everybody talked about sports and sports performance and functionality. We said, 'Well, it's about more.'
Perfect is very boring, and if you happen to have a different look, that's a celebration of human nature, I think. If we were all symmetrical and perfect, life would be very dull.
Growing up, I missed the whole 'Three Stooges' thing. Either they weren't on the station in my hometown, or we hadn't bought a TV set yet, or they came to town too late for me. I'm pretty sure that at the right age, I would have loved them.
There are some who want to move us back to the days when we were protectionists and keep all goods off our shores.
Look, a lot of directors were actors, even if they were unsuccessful actors which I think is helpful. I think it's a really helpful thing for a director to have experienced that. It helps you know how to talk to actors and how to get what you need from them.
I'm in total sympathy with Dick Smith's sentiments; I only wish there were grounds for saying we Australians would never tolerate such appalling treatment of refugees being carried out in our name.
My dad had a stroke. It's one of those life-changing events. It was right around the time I was turning 40. We were doing 'L.A. Law,' and I got this call that my dad was in Rome and had had a stroke. I want to stress that it wasn't a huge stroke, but it was enough to provide a serious wake-up call.
The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.
The world will always need revolution. That doesn't mean shooting and violence. A revolution is when you change your thinking. Confucianism and Christianity were both revolutionary.
Growing up, my dolls were doctors and on secret missions. I had Barbie Goes Rambo.
Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith - even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity.
Everybody had their fans and they were fans of all of them.
I've always been someone who thought it didn't matter where you were playing. I always shot for the best you could get. It never bothered me if it was small or it was big.
People were very passionate and over the top about showing me their love and affection, and they memorized my songs in Spanish.
When we were on the farm, we were isolated, not just by geography but by the primitive living conditions: no electricity, no running water and, of course, no computer, no phone.
I grew up on a council estate in south London; my dad was a bus driver and my mum sewed clothes to bring in extra money. My parents worked hard and were able to save up and buy a home for our family.
The first band I was ever in, I played guitar. We did Gary Glitter and Green Day covers at the time. We were called Fizz. I have no idea why we picked that. We were, like, 12 years old.
My family, although they're very large on both my parents' sides, they don't know much about their family tree. Occasionally, they try to dig, but they can't get very far, and it's baffling. In Dublin, it seems that so many public records were wiped out; it's proven to be very difficult, so I know very little.
I was a super once - an extra - in 'Die Fledermaus,' and was seated within three feet of Placido Domingo. I had never heard a voice of that beauty so close up. It felt as if an electric shock were running through me.
What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You're all Muslim, so now you're a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: 'Oh no, we're not.'
TV and film were always governing passions of mine, and that first wave of great HBO shows in the early years of the millennium was feeding my desire for fiction more than the books I was reading.
When I was in college, I was in the theater department, which for anyone who has been involved in any kind of theater program, you know that it's really wacky and tight-knit, a real family. Me and my good friends from college would do random shows and plays that were sometimes serious, but most of the time really goofy and funny.
The novels I planned to write were never going to be funny books about Jews. They were going to be country house books. Only later on could I write what I knew I was best at writing about.
What works for one writer may not work for another. There are as many methods as there are writers. Were you to live to a grand old age, you would still never have enough time to try them all.
We couldn't predict what would happen with 'Roots.' You knew there were powerful moments that were going to affect people. We were making the film while the book was being completed. We were fortunate because the hardcover book was out and on the best-seller list. The heat was still on.
A lot of Polish and Russian Jews had this experience: they would emigrate, thinking they were on their way to New York. Then their captains would stop in Dublin and say, 'Everybody off.' They would leave, and by the time they discovered they weren't in America, they didn't have enough money to continue.
The fight for justice for the transgender community is largely invisible to our fellow citizens, despite the rampant systematic discrimination of trans people - those whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.
Marie Stopes had established the first birth control clinic in Britain; the whole question of informing women, especially those who were poor, about methods of contraception, began to be discussed.
It is difficult to remember just how formal middle-class life was in the 1930's and '40s. I wore a suit and tie at home from the age of 18. One dressed for breakfast. One lived in a very formal way, and emotions were not paraded. And my childhood was not unusual.
I gathered as much reading material about Aung San Suu Kyi and about Burma as I could. And I read every article and every book she had written. I also had 200 hours of footage of her to watch. I tried to discover who were her heroes and where he desire and strength to pursue democracy in a non-violent fashion came from.
I thought: 'My education is driving a wedge between me and the people I love.' And then I wondered: 'What would happen if it were possible to increase a person's intelligence?'
