My father died during open-heart surgery on March 29 of my senior year in college. I was getting set to go to law school. I remember sitting in the waiting room when the doctor walked in. I said to myself, The worst possible thing just happened. What will you do?
In The Touch, the love scenes are the same as they were in The Thorn Birds or anything else I've ever written. I find a way of saying that either it was heaven or hell but in a way that still leaves room for the reader to use their own imagination.
All round the room my silent servants wait, My friends in every season, bright and dim.
I just love to dance. Pretty much every night, I'll just turn on the radio in my room and dance like crazy.
Don't look now but there's one man too many in this room and I think it's you!
Being with an insanely jealous person is like being in the room with a dead mammoth.
This was the wonder of advertising; the complete absence of cynicism. It may have many mansions, but it has no room for Doubting Thomases.
There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.
My home is attached to a study - in fact, my home is my study, and I have a little room to sleep in. I need to write looking onto the street or a landscape. Looking at reality from some distance gives me romantic visions.
I think reading a room - reading the personalities, reading body language - is kind of a lost art.
Most of the things that have happened in my life have been pretty arbitrary. I walk into a room, and someone hits me with a two-by-four, and that changes my life. I'm not sure what I've learned from anything.
While all the other kids were out playing ball and stuff, I used to stay in my room and imagine that there was a camera in the wall. And I used to really believe that I was putting on a television show and that it was going out to somewhere in the world.
There is always room at the top.
I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?'
There is always room at the top - after the investigation.
Maybe we like our politicians to appear like bumbling oafs. It certainly never did Ronald Reagan or George Bush any harm. The Italians still seem enamoured of Silvio Berlusconi - a man whose entry into a room is less likely to be greeted with the Italian national anthem than by the Benny Hill theme tune.
Often, I'll do a quick workout in my hotel room consisting of exercises for the legs, glutes, abs, and arms with my own body weight. Also, I always have a jump rope, a medicine ball I can inflate, and a band in my suitcase. It's a great kit to have for travel.
Possibly I am difficult to live with, but I don't bring my work home much. I'm either busy or not busy. And I don't work from home. I have an office here which has a white wall. No view. I did try working in a room with a view but it was too interesting. Too distracting.
Acting must be scaled down for the screen. A drawing room is a lot smaller than a theatre auditorium.
There's a monster outside my room, can I have a glass of water?
Football is made up of all kinds of conflict. In a dressing room, between players, between us and the manager, between us and loads of people who don't seem to matter. It's constant and harsh sometimes.
For example, I was discussing the use of email and how impersonal it can be, how people will now email someone across the room rather than go and talk to them. But I don't think this is laziness, I think it is a conscious decision people are making to save time.
There's no substitute to actually being in the room and having people in the room feel the force of your audition. It's very hard to beat that.
But there's always a Mass. It's not a formal Mass at all. We're sitting around her dining room table with wine and Eucharist and holding hands. It's very informal and small, but to me that's a wonderful way to have Mass.
I allow a lot of room for improvisation and funny stuff. I always feel planned.
As a teenager, Monica Seles won some historic matches on the tennis court, dominating opponents and filling a room with trophies.
History has long had a wall up between the kitchen and the dining room. Front of house, back of house - one group always wielded more power and influence.
I have a constituency with 52,000 people and a million sheep. I was in one village where a local kid was run over by a tractor. They took him to Carlisle, but they couldn't be bothered to wait at the hospital. So they put him in a darkened room for two weeks, then said he was fine. But I'm not so sure he was.
I had a Spider-man costume when I was about three, and I lost the mask. So I went to the underwear drawer and put a pair of red pants on my head. My dad came home and just laughed, and I ran into my room and burst into tears.
Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. But I'd like to add a third certainty: trash. And while some in this room might want to discuss reducing taxes, I want to talk about reducing trash.
I always liked the smell of a smoke-filled room. I think it's a good smell.
My house was full of music. My main memories are of the record player at home: it was all Beatles and Rolling Stones, and we danced around the living room; that started me off on instruments, and I've done nothing else ever since.
I realize that when I moved out of my father's house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.
Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards.
So I got interested in singing and I have always used my voice. Not professionally as much, but around the living room, the campfire, that kind of thing.
Being in Los Angeles is this brutal awakening, where I feel not good enough as soon as I walk into a room, and I'm wearing the wrong thing, or I don't have enough make up on. It's all about image.
