When I was young, we had nothing. The carpets and upholstery in the palace were full of holes. The floors creaked. Everything was so old. Yes, we had a piano, an upright given to us by the Fine Arts Department. But it was out of tune.
I do want to have children, but my parents had me when they were in their forties. I'd like to copy that.
There were a lot of assumptions that we were raised a certain way. Our dad was always really clear with us that he is rich and we are not: 'If you want to be rich, you should go do what I did, which is work really hard.'
When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky - poor parents! - I would be home before it got dark.
Nothing has ever touched on what fun childhood was. Summer holidays were bliss. We made home movies, with real stories in them. My father had such charm and charisma, and made everything so funny.
I had strong legs that would have made me a good sumo wrestler and I used that to my advantage, but my home runs were achieved by technique.
I grew up in Florida, where if you weren't comfortable dancing, you weren't going to get any girls.
In my family, they were all big boozers.
It's like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it's solid so it's something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.
We started off as this platform inside Facebook; and we were pretty clear from the beginning that that wasn't where it was going to end up. A lot of people saw it and asked, 'Why is Facebook trying to get all these applications inside Facebook when the web is clearly the platform?' And we actually agreed with that.
Only four secretaries of defense served longer than Robert M. Gates. Many others were as dedicated; many sacrificed a great deal. Alone among them all, however, Mr. Gates had the task of turning around two wars that the U.S. was losing.
All my high school papers were written in the rare book room.
The Nobel Prize in Economics is an incredible recognition for the work that my students, colleagues and I have done over the years. We all worked hard, but we were also lucky that the financial applications were so important.
There were so many people after that first 'Colbert Report' interview that were impressed by the synergy we had during the interview. People everywhere we'd go would say, 'You should be the bandleader; it would be great for jazz. It would be great for the music.' But I was completely against it.
I was convinced you were not able to tell a consumer you can have a healthy fried chip or a good-tasting baked chip.
All four of my grandparents were educators, my mom was a school nurse, and I went through the public school system.
It was in 1942 and I flew from St. Louis to Mexico City. I had just gotten married and we were on our honeymoon. I hit .397 and led the Mexican League with 20 home runs and was named the MVP of the league. It's when I realized I could compete with anyone at any level.
As a child, I was tortured because my mother was a brilliant seamstress who made most of my clothes. I was despised by the children at school because I looked like I was going to an opening every day. We weren't wealthy at all; we lived in a row house in Philadelphia.
I was attacked by a dog when I was a toddler, and my injuries were so bad, I spent quite a bit of my childhood in and out of hospital. Books were absolutely my salvation during those years.
Movies are as old as psychoanalysis. So if I were to put you or anyone else on a couch and say, 'Tell me your favorite movies,' it would be a way of psychoanalyzing you.
I think the fact that my wife died in Mexico City makes it very important to me; my life went up in smoke at that moment, the family and the future we were going to have. At that point, I was anchored to the city in a way I've never been anchored to a place before.
We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: 'Boy, you are skinny, aren't you?' I said: 'Honey, I'd like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.'
I did 'Land of the Dead,' which was the biggest zombie film I had ever made. I don't think it needed to be that big. That money went largely to the cast. They were great, but I don't think that money needed to be spent.
I was painfully shy when I was a kid. I always thought when most people were born, part of the toolkit was teaching you how to relate to other people - and it was just left out of my toolkit.
Saints were saints because they acted with loving kindness whether they felt like it or not.
Most young people haven't used their storytelling skills since they were 8 or 9 or 10 and wanted to persuade Mom and Dad to take them to the ball game.
If a big number of young pupils felt secularism was an attack on them, it was because the term had been misused and deformed in the public debate for years by the extreme-right and the right as an attack on Islam. The term had often been misused to point out how Muslims were different to others, and that is clearly problematic.
If my grandchildren were to look at me and say, 'You were aware species were disappearing and you did nothing, you said nothing', that I think is culpable. I don't know how much more they expect me to be doing, I'd better ask them.
When I think of myself, I think of Toronto. My music would never sound the way it does if it weren't for Toronto.
I'm such an avid magazine reader - music, art, beauty magazines - and I found that food and restaurants were pouring into everything I cared about. Whether it was the pop-up concept, or some mysterious mini-mall restaurant, I got swept up in the sexy romance of the food movement.
I grew up, and my body was not like a Spanish player. I was tall. I had a powerful game; my arms were long, so I'm like, 'No, you can't play like Spanish players.'
I was married at 20 and had a baby by 21. I had to grow up fast. Luckily there were people who believed in me and there were always jobs when I needed one.
My charity is in the business of helping firefighters in any way that we can. For instance, after 9/11 we were the second-fastest charity to raise and distribute money to the widows and surviving family members of the 343 firefighters who died that day.
I'm originally from Dallas, Texas, where Bonnie and Clyde were from, so when I was a little kid, my grandfather used to drive me past the Barrow Filling Station. At my elementary school, there was a barn outside that they used to say was a Bonnie and Clyde hangout.
We just weren't a family that gathered around the TV. I grew up in a town where everyone was outside all the time. I was mostly in Connecticut; I spent a lot of time in Tennessee in the summers, but I was in Stamford, Connecticut.
My parents were New Yorkers, and I was conceived in Los Angeles. My father was a makeup artist to Clint Eastwood and Richard Chamberlain.
