I am a living illustration of Bosnian mixing and converting. My grandparents lived in eastern Herzegovina. Very poor. The Turks came and brought Islam. There were three brothers in the family. One was Orthodox Christian. The other two took Islam to survive.
I cannot bear assaults of any kind, and it seems to me that the Beatles essentially were out to affront and to assault.
I was very fortunate in my gene mix. The gambling instincts I inherited from my father were matched by my mother's gift for analysis.
We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
Justice Rehnquist was friendly and unpretentious. He wore scuffed Hush Puppy shoes. That was my first lesson. Clothes do not make the man. The Justice sported long sideburns and Buddy Holly glasses long after they were fashionable. And he wore loud ties that I am confident were never fashionable.
Sometimes we see the Civil War in movies and imagine these neatly aligned rows of men with muskets, walking in line to shoot each other. In reality the things that fascinated me were how absolutely ruthless and violent so many engagements were, how much suffering and how men were not prepared.
The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity.
My mother and father were fantastic, very active. I find it difficult to say this, but I'm quite a loving person and I've always been loving to my friends. In the long run, that pays off. I'm very interested in other people, and if you are, they're interested in you.
It's funny, in some of the interviews I've seen that were done for the film, some people say things like, 'Oh, I was never a very big Jim Woodring fan. I've never thought his work was that great.'
When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.
My grandmothers are full of memories, smelling of soap and onions and wet clay, with veins rolling roughly over quick hands, they have many clean words to say, my grandmothers were strong.
Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild.
I loved being outside. We'd hold lightning bugs in our fingers and pretend they were diamond rings.
They had a hard time miking me in my loin cloth, I mean, where were they gonna tape it?
I used to chop up C-Span soundbites or interviews with politicians like John Kerry or Bill Clinton into a radio-esque show hosted by Awkwafina and her producer, Mookie. I would pitch down my vocals to have male guests and would send them to a small circle of friends after they were done.
When you're on this major English estate, breathing in the English air, and it's untouched, you can feel its presence. It's a whole different feel. It really felt like we were there living it. It didn't feel modern, ever.
But if I were to sum up who Barack Obama is and how he plans to meet this moment with one word, that word would be 'responsibility.' Responsibility to each other, our families, our communities, our country, and our world.
People weren't even aware that I wrote my own songs. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist.
People in the States used to think that if girls were good at sports their sexuality would be affected.
I try to understand faith and religion. I was raised by wonderful Catholic parents who were deeply faithful and taught us that God is a God of love.
To do health care was a noble, good thing, and it will help America dramatically. I don't begrudge Barack Obama choosing it, even though if I were president, I might not have.
I think the film is beautifully realised. His legacy as a journalist was recorded - as it were - well, and certainly the important issues of the '50s - or even today - are delivered and presented to the audience in a rather honest and objective way.
It was 1981. I was working on a novel. And I put that novel aside one day after I read a newspaper article. The story said there were 19 women still on the pension payroll who were Confederate war widows. They were women who very early in their lives had married very old men.
The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.
It used to be that if you were on a sitcom you couldn't get work in film because it was so different. Now it's almost like you have to be on TV to do other film work.
Not too many people are - were as good as Bob Hope. George Burns was great at thinking, you know, on the spot. Steve Allen was marvelous, and so was George Burns. But Bob may be the king of them all, you know.
The publisher has told - you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative.
I got an apartment for my family so they can move out of this one-room that they were renting out from a family.
I'm kind of old to change. But if somebody were to come to me and say, 'You know what, Valerie? I think if you were to do this it would be more helpful,' of course I would listen to that.
Ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think is most reasonable to enact.
Dad built houses and when they were sold, he moved on to a new town, so I know a lot about my native state.
When I first started, as long as you were a bit brown, you could play any kind of ethnic anything. Now it's much more localised and specific. I feel like a wise old woman looking back on the evolution of how much more sophisticated audiences are.
I have wanted to be a fine artist painter, and I reached the point in art schools were I'd like to understand more about images and how images communicate information to people. And I was not getting very far in that from my professors.
And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; what Communist Party members could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted - steal, you know, lie, whatever.
Yes, we were looking for a Faith spin-off, but then Faith backed down. Eliza got a really wonderful offer over on Fox in a show, and, for reasons I didn't talk to her about, she decided to go there, and everyone respects that.
I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels.
