When stuck years ago in a job I hated, my only friend was the public bench. As the tedious mornings dragged on, how I would long for the lunch hour, when I would be able to escape the torture of the office and stroll over to the churchyard and into t...
I started skating when I was about 10 years old. It was in an alleyway. I picked up my brother's skateboard and stood on it. I started to roll down the alley, and I yelled at my brother asking him how I turn the thing. At the end of the alley, I just...
I went through all my electric bills, the water bills, the phone bills, elevator contracts, and I found enough wasteful spending without reducing any programs anywhere, without reducing any services, I found enough wasteful spending to pay my entire ...
The fantasy that appeals most to people is the kind that's rooted thoroughly in somebody looking around a corner and thinking, 'What if I wandered into this writer's people here?' If you've done your job and made your people and your settings well en...
I've had jobs that allow me the flexibility to achieve work-life balance, to be there when one of the kids sinks a jump shot or for the parent-teacher meetings. I can move tasks around. If I don't get something done at the office at 4:30 in the after...
So often, we're expected to maintain some sort of standard - that won't get you where you need to go. One of the most daring things I've done is drop out of graduate school. I had no job, but something inside me was saying, 'Go! Be in the world!' I h...
Publishers are very risk-averse, so they lean towards licenses and sequels. But the fact is that even those are not guaranteed hits. So, if 'playing it safe' does not guarantee hits, they might as well leave it up to the really creative, risk-taking ...
Before 'Final Fantasy VII,' I would have told you that I had zero interest in RPGs with turn-based combat. But that game was so well done, I didn't care what genre it was. Any genre can be done poorly or done well.
A huge part of what a kid learns when they're growing up is social and emotional development. As adults, we take it for granted that other people have emotions that are different from ours, and we can identify what they are, but those are skills that...
I can tell you that I can always recognize a Boston song, even if it's in a noisy place. I can hear that it's Boston even before I know what song it is. If a Boston song comes on in a club or somewhere, I notice that it's Boston, and the second thing...
The problem is that once I start on a song and get a rough idea of where I might go with an arrangement, I try dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different things on a song. The bass, the backing guitars, the lead guitars, the keyboards. It's a long proc...
This has always been a small agency with a big mission. But these days, especially, we have to stand up every day, deliver value into the hands of small-business owners and get taxpayers the biggest bang for their buck so that we can help these job c...
I think, in terms of corporate philosophy, I've always believed that you've got to treat people in a very very egalitarian manner in the sense I like to treat people on a one-to-one basis. And I like people to take on a lot of responsibilities becaus...
I thought every other kid was like me. I'd watch films and act them out on my own and wish I could be one of the actresses. When I saw 'Pride And Prejudice,' the one with Colin Firth, I just absolutely knew that was what I wanted to do, and for 'Cran...
Everyone is living for everyone else now. They're doing stuff so they can tell other people about it. I don't get all that social media stuff, I've always got other things I want to do - odd jobs around the house. No one wants to hear about that.
Before I came to New York, I only had a few pictures of the city in my mind. And you know 'That Girl?' Marlo Thomas jumping with her hat? I always loved that, and I wondered what that double street she crosses is. And it's Park Avenue! And that's wha...
Like many actors, I started off as a monkey. My first job ever was as an extra in Tim Burton's 'Planet of the Apes.' I'm the tiny little monkey in the background. I met Rick Baker doing that - then, because of my size and the fact I was older than 18...
I started writing because it was hard to find acting jobs. I didn't like any monologues in auditions, so I started to write my own things. Since then, I have written a couple of shows. I was nominated for playwright of the year for a play I wrote cal...
Like Alan Turing, Zuse was educated in a system that focused on a child's emotional and philosophical life as well as his intellectual life, and at the end of school, like Turing, Zuse found himself to be something of an outsider—to the disappointm...
When you go to Nashville and start co-writing, you start doing it as a job and the more you do it the better you get. You know if you build houses for 30 years you're better than you were the day you started. You know the ins and outs, you know all t...
I remember, my first job when I got my working papers at 13 was as a vendor at Yankee Stadium - the old Yankee Stadium, with very steep stairs in the upper decks. It was all commission-based. And I think a soft drink was 25 cents, and I think you got...
