I bristle at the implication that only with the help of a Big Six editor does a novel lose its self-indulgent aspects. Before the advent of self-publishing, there were plenty of self-indulgent novels on the shelves.
I've always been drawn to the Edwardian period in England. To me, it seems like such a fascinating time, when the British Empire was at the height of its powers and the strict mores of the Victorian age were dissipating into the decadence of King Edward's reign.
I was offered, within one year, three different witch roles. It was almost like the world was saying - or the studios were saying - 'We don't know what to do with you.'
There is no question that at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about my country, that I worked far too hard and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate.
The great medley of Oregon and California emigrants, at their camps around Independence, had heard reports that several additional parties were on the point of setting out from St. Joseph's farther to the northward.
In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn't really have quite enough nuance.
People-trafficking is modern day slavery. There are more slaves today than there were at the height of the slave trade.
After being raised as an evangelical Christian, I for years assumed that Christianity was the default - there were Christians, and then there were weirdos. I was shocked when, in college, I found that some people get offended when you tell them, for instance, that their recovery from surgery was a 'miracle.'
I remember, as a kid, riding in the back of my dad's old Saab 95 in Denmark. We were on the highway, and suddenly this silver Maserati Bora came upon us, then passed. At the time, to me, this car looked like a spaceship.
I'm an essayist. And this is a genre that has existed for a few thousand years. Ever heard of Cicero? So these rules that I'm working under are not mine but rather were established by writers who recognized the difference between the hard research of journalism and the kind of inquiry of mind that characterizes the essay.
We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.
I'd like to think, that were he alive today, Warhol would be painting the Housewives.
Back in 2010, it didn't matter when it was only Cuban democrats, Zimbabwean dissidents, Afghan reformists and Russian bloggers whose lives and liberty were put at risk by Wikileaks' wilfully negligent data dumps.
I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.
I was always the classroom clown, and the teachers allowed me a certain latitude. The assemblies were good, and the headmaster used to tell little stories; I loved the idea of communal storytelling.
I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.
My best holidays were in Devon and Cornwall when the children were growing up. We always used to stay on farms because our children were pretty wild, and it was great going to the beach every day. We used to go to Launceston and Salcombe and all over those two counties.
I don't think the goal is, 'How big a star did you ever become?' I think the goal is, 'Were you able to express yourself?'
I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.
I was surprised when I finally moved to Boston and the East Coast, to discover that there weren't that many vibraphone players around. And I was the only one playing with four mallets.
Books were a huge part of my childhood growing up. We would go on vacation, and my mom was always carting manuscripts around.
If I were to look back at my career, I think my greatest achievement is very simple. I've been able to make choices where I could glorify God.
When Facebook famously moved out to Palo Alto, there were people in the same house Facebook was based in working on different ideas. It is vital to remember that.
I may have come into politics with an unacknowledged condescension toward the game and the people who played it, but I left with more respect for politicians than when I went in. The worst of them - the careerists and predators - you find in all professions. The best of them were a credit to democracy.
I grew up in a family of piano players. Both my sisters were serious players, and they both, as they became more accomplished, aspired to buy a Steinway and asked my dad to buy a Steinway.
When you're in a band with three writers, three great writers, you only get one third of the writer thing. So that's the whole reason that I did a solo career. And that's, you know, when I told Fleetwood Mac I was going to do that, they were of course terrified that I would do that record and then that I would quit.
My body back at the Playboy mansion was the most important thing in life back then because we were in the spotlight every minute. We had to look good. The girls who gained the weight, those were the girls who didn't get the work.
We may have been born on third base, but we worked like we were starting from home plate. You know: batter up.
I've bought perfectly healthy horses for a couple of hundred dollars just as they were about to be loaded on a slaughterhouse-bound truck.
We had this unbelievable faith that no business has done, quite frankly, and we tripped along the way doing it, but within two years, we were in 40-plus countries. So we ran at an amazing pace, and this is where venture capitalists play a role. Making Groupon into what it is today, we had no role in it; the entrepreneurs did it.
Women were going back to work, they were assuming their own power. They didn't have time to sit under the dryer.
In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.
They would call me 'The Cleaner' because I would replace boys who were real adolescents, and their voices completely changed, and they couldn't do the voices anymore.
Some of my favorite pieces were my mom's, and most of those she actually hand made. I would say if my style reflects anyone or anything, it's her.
It's nice to go back and look at the original version of Cyborg in the 1980s, when he was created, and seeing how politically and socially charged they were: it was no holds barred. If DC ever made a return to that social awareness and that sort of context, I'd be super-thrilled to see that.
How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?
