Right before I decided to come out, I went on a spiritual retreat called 'Changing the Inner Dialogue of Your Subconscious Mind.' I'd never been to anything like it before, and all my friends were taking bets on how long I'd last with no TV, no radio...
Could you love an alcoholic cruel father, or a prostitute amoral mother? You could never love them, because they do not give you anything, but take your honour instead. Neither could you, if your native land did so. Patriotism beyond egoistic interes...
I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything ...
When I first moved to L.A., I discovered Roy London. I didn't know anything about the arts, the profession; I had no technique, I knew nothing, I'm fresh from Missouri. I sat in on a few classes, and they just felt a little guru-ish and just didn't f...
My friend Quincy Jones says we won our first Grammys together in 1963. I have no recollection. I don't even remember the room. When he showed me the picture, I remembered what I wore. But it's like awards don't mean anything.
In Mudcrutch we all wrote songs, and when it got to the focus on Tom and the Heartbreakers, I kept writing songs, but it wasn't anything that was up the Heartbreakers tree, I didn't think - and I don't think they did, either. So I kept writing songs ...
My martial arts came a lot from my uncle, who actually taught martial arts through the military. He was a black belt in tae kwon do, but also, he used a lot of military-style fighting where it's not the high kicks or anything like that. It's basicall...
Zombies are the ideal late twentieth-century monsters. A zombie is the one thing you can't deal with. It survives anything. Frankenstein's monster and Dracula could be sent down in so many ways. Zombies, though, fall outside all this. You can't argue...
There's a huge dichotomy between people who grow up with alienation, which, for me, was invaluable, and people who grow up so completely privileged that it breeds this complacency and lack of desire to question or challenge or do anything significant...
I still get called 'a stick of dynamite' or 'pint-sized dynamo,' stuff like that. Actually, I was too busy to notice there was anything unusual about being a woman director until the early 1980s, when I looked around the professional theater and real...
If the existence of Nuclear weapons has taught us anything it would simply be that just because we possess powerful technologies, it does not necessarily mean that we should use them. Unfortunately, we are currently on course to learn similarly grave...
I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anythin...
I do not think he (Chester Arthur) knows anything. He can quote a verse from poetry or a page from Dickens or Thackeray, but these are only leaves springing from a root out of dry ground. His vital forces are not fed,and very soon he has given out hi...
My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not m...
Certainly, I know what it's like to be obsessed. I haven't always been there for my children. They could reach me, but I wasn't always there. But, you know, that's not necessarily anything to do with being a writer. I mean, a taxi driver could have t...
I think my recognizability ebbs and flows. I don't lead a particularly celebrity lifestyle or anything like that. I don't go to showbiz parties or red-carpet events, so it all depends on whether I've got a film out. I've not been very visible in the ...
It's not difficult to take care of a child; it's difficult to do anything else while taking care of a child. Trying to clean up the kitchen after you've had a baby is a nightmare because you have to wait for the baby to be asleep, you're exhausted, a...
One of the things that helps use cope with loss is the fact that while memories may remian, the emotions associated with them will fade like old photographs. At the same time, there is a masochistic desire to retain those feelings spurred on by the d...
I've never been impressed with bureaucratic tradition. I don't like it when the parties come to me and say, 'This is the way that it's always done, judge.' I never found anything in the oath I took or the statutes I was asked to look at that said, 'J...
I've always believed," she replied, "that if God is going to be strict about anything, that He will be strict about the rules concerning hate, not love. And if two people love each other, that has to be better than two people hating each other. Beyon...
A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick. --John Steinbeck to Adlai Stevenson
