Diagnosed incidentally with stage IV, grade 4 metastatic renal cell carcinoma, I had bone metastases in my femur (which eventually fractured), ulna, and cranium; five metastases in my lungs; and muscle metastases in my thigh and tongue. Yet six month...
That fist he was raising at me would wham into the cupboard door, hurting only himself. I saw it all happening, then it really did happen. But I didn't understand the whore thing. Why was he confusing the drinking with the other? Then I got it. Obvio...
I have a deep appreciation for anything that challenges my morality. I tend to wonder which thing or person might overpower my beliefs and would I avoid it altogether in order to say, "It didn't conquer me," or would I accept the challenge head-on in...
Life is like the end of a pendulum. Swinging back and fourth in a Clock. Where the bottom is always heavy and swings wide. It moves time. The top stays in one place. Doesn't move anything. You want to be the bottom of the pendulum and swing back and ...
I've been eating tons of organic foods, staying away from processed sugars, white flours, and anything artificial. It's the same as my normal regime, but I'm being even stricter, because everything I put into my body is literally building this precio...
We speak, and write, in one of the most diverse, gloriously ecumenical tongues on the planet. In English, there is a word or phrase for pretty much anything we want to say, and if there isn't, we make it up, and it is welcomed into the family. We can...
I gave up so many things. It wasn't that I was out of control - it was just years of eating anything I wanted. I wouldn't eat a whole pizza, but if I wanted pizza two or three times a week, I didn't think to limit myself. So I just cut out all the st...
The chimpanzee study was - well, it's still going on, and I think it's taught us perhaps more than anything else to be a little humble; that we are, indeed, unique primates, we humans, but we're simply not as different from the rest of the animal kin...
In Europe, I am an outsider. I don't really understand anything that I am seeing. I can be welcomed into people's homes, I can be met with suspicion, I can be taken somewhere else altogether. There is always wonderment there for me, even if the perso...
The only thing that interests the physicist is finding out on what assumptions a framework of things can be constructed which will enable us to know how to use them mechanically. Physics, as I have said on another occasion, is the technique of techni...
For a variety of reasons, I have always felt myself an outsider. I don't know how to classify myself in economics. I am a loner. I do not like groupthink, which, if anything, has become more important in economics. In addition, a lot of the values I ...
I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glu...
How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie? Like, I wanted to write this one director a letter, so I wrote him a handwritten note. But then I was like, 'How many people are writing this guy handwritten l...
Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue - nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some peo...
Dr. Frederick Chilton: Do not touch the glass. Do not approach the glass. You pass him nothing but soft paper - no pencils or pens. No staples or paperclips in his paper. Use the sliding food carrier, no exceptions. If he attempts to pass you anythin...
My brother Trev went to the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, and he used to do his monologues and stuff and rehearse in our apartment. So I used to hear him all the time doing these things over and over and over. And when I was a litt...
From the happy-go-lucky days of oil exploration and drilling, when a lot of easy sources were being found and easily managed, we're gotten ourselves into this sort of apocalyptic time. We're willing to destroy almost everything, risk almost anything,...
I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even 'pass the salt' - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying t...
Did you know there's a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy - running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything - is the same as wasting your time? It's frustrating to expend...
Each time I write a new piece, whether a novel, a picture book, a speech or anything, really, it has so much to do with what I'm going through personally or a problem I'm trying to work out. When I wrote my novel 'Baby,' my three children had all jus...
When I sat down to write I just felt like a geek writing about myself. And then it dawned on me, just because of the way I am, I can't stop talking, and part of the problem is that anything that gets said reminds me of something that happened to me o...
