The comedians I liked were Bill Cosby and Steven Wright, like just always as a comedic actor. I always liked Gary Larson, who's really funny for a cartoonist, obviously.
Swipe fees have increased steadily since the introduction of debit cards 20 years ago, when there were no swipe fees at all. Merchants can't negotiate or control them. They've tried, but they have no leverage against the big banks and issuers. So they get ignored.
Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.
I found a comfort in trying to solve some poetic problems because there were human ones I just couldn't solve.
See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
I was standing onstage last year, and I felt like I wanted to be somewhere else. No matter how many people were out there, it all just felt like a blank sheet of paper.
The first devices to record and play back music were the phonograph and the gramophone. The gramophone's inventor: Alexander Graham Bell.
I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean.
For a long time, I was an assistant in the NFL to George Allen, and George was paranoid that other teams were cheating on him... that they were offering bounties, that they were wiring our locker room, that they were putting food poisoning into the pregame meal of the other team's stars, stuff like that.
Once you start to look at the gospels one by one, you realize that followers of Jesus were trying to understand what had happened after he was arrested and killed. They knew Judas had handed him over to the people who arrested him.
I did two movies that were arthouse movies; they were critically successful but made no money at all... but after making those movies, I thought, 'I wouldn't watch my own movies when I was 16, and my buddies where I came from wouldn't watch my movies, because they were boring.'
I love to read. I was in AP English in high school, and we were assigned books every few months. 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' are two of my favorite ones.
If you got in my truck, you were listening to country music, and that's the way it was for a long time. I'm a little more open to other sources of music now, a lot more. But for the formative years, I was just very into country.
For me personally, the technology that has taken the most unexpected turn in my lifetime is what I refer to as 'the device formerly known as the cell phone.' I still remember many predictions that by 2000 there would only be about a million cell phone users. Boy, were they ever wrong!
The past is full of examples of renegade writers who were overlooked in their time not only because their work didn't fit neatly into potted categories but also because they avoided the self-promotional efforts of their peers.
My mom is from New Orleans. And all of my maternal relatives were there during Katrina. We couldn't even find my uncle for four months. We literally didn't know where he was. I had been there just four days before the storm hit.
It's hard to mix with a crowd when you're walking down the hallway and everybody else is a foot shorter. I remember hanging out with my friends, like at the mall, and thinking people were staring at me and talking about me. It made me turn inside myself. I became more shy and quiet.
I've seen people around me write books, and somehow they're always in the center of everything that happened; they were the one who made it happen. There's been a lot of those books that didn't really interest me much.
I think that, when you die, you go back to where you came from before you were born. So I don't think death is a bad thing.
I never felt like someone who was boyish and coming to terms with asking girls out or anything like that, which was what 'The Big Steal' and 'Spotswood' were about. But I guess that's the impression I left on people.
I always loved ghost stories and haunted house stories, whether they were done in a fantasy way or done in a realistic way.
Those who are faithful to God are protected and prospered. That comes as the result of serving God and keeping His commandments. But with those blessings comes the temptation to forget their source. It is easy to begin to feel the blessings were granted not by a loving God on whom we depend but by our own powers.
I drew a lot. I always had sketchbooks. My parents were really great about any gift-giving holiday - birthdays, Hanukkah, Christmas - it was always art supplies for my brother and I.
I do well with peoples' parents, but I've certainly had friends who were not. One of my best friends is pretty consistently reviled by his girlfriends' parents!
Remembering the loss of those Irishmen from all parts of the island who were sent to their deaths in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War is crucial to understanding our history. It is also important to recognise the special significance in which the Battle of the Somme and the First World War is held.
I've always liked long hair. My dad's always had long hair, but he always tells me, 'I never had it in a ponytail.' And I say to him, 'You weren't an England goalie either, were ya.'
With the time, as I was growing up and I got taller and my arms were longer, I developed this aggressive style because I think it was better for me, for my style of game.
At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't have what we wanted.
I had studied piano since I was 13, but I was surrounded by students who'd been playing since they were 5. I realized I was never going to be anything but mediocre.
We knew sports was important to us and our family, but there are priorities in life.Obviously, faith is foremost; how we did in school is important. If we didn't handle that business then there were no privileges.
I wanted to represent minorities in the respect of people who had been bullied in school or people who were gay or lesbian or trans or people who aren't blonde haired and blue-eyed. I have short hair, and I am covered in tattoos. I like showing people that it's within their rights to be different.
There would be no Star Trek unless there were transporter malfunctions.
There are a lot of funny people in my family. Absolutely. There were a lot of jokes growing up around the dinner table, for sure. We didn't grow up in a creative family.
I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.
I'm the youngest of five kids, and I wanted attention. And in Santa Barbara, there was lots of theater going on, so for that area, it was a little bit like playing Little League baseball. There were dance classes, theater classes, and I just loved it.
There are things I'd wish weren't part of ageing. But what you gain is much more than you're giving up. I don't think you come into your own until you're 35 or so.
