While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.
I was one of those kids who tended to stay in on Saturday nights. My mother used to come and say, 'Why don't you go to the dance with the boys?' And I'm going, 'No, I'm perfectly happy.' I think my parents thought I was definitely weird.
Television has made places look alike, and it has transformed the way we see. A whole generation of Americans, maybe two, has grown up looking at the world through a lens.
My dear boy, your thinking has no structure, no foundation. You pick up your primary ideas from TV shows. You're like a fart in the bathtub. ['The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes']
Self-discovery is so important in identity processing: who you hang out with, what clothes you wear, what shows you see. As a kid, I found out about things through friends. I would go to hardcore shows with 50 people.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
Other times you had a rake of our lads killed, and a rake of the old grey-suited devils, and you wouldn’t know who had won the fucking thing, sure how could you tell boys?
The Boy looked at him for a long time before responding. “Well, as long as you’re my friend, I’ll never ignore you,” he said with conviction. “I know what it’s like to be invisible to other people.
I adore summer entertaining. For a dinner party at the farm, I might prepare homemade fettuccine with porcini mushrooms, soft-shell crabs, spinach from the garden, and lemon tarts with fraises des bois for dessert.
Chances are that neither the client nor the agency will ever know very much about what role the ad has played in sales or profits of the client, either short-term or long-term.
I'm a country boy. I hate New York. But that's where things happen, so I use it as a base for stories, I know enough about it. But I have to keep going back there.
These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Bossy means “given to ordering people around, highhanded, domineering, overly authoritative, dictatorial, abrasive.” ...Could it be that girls are called bossy when they’re… well, bossy? Could it be that boys are also called bossy for the sam...
For some reason, on that sparkling afternoon last week, I actually saw the coal that was passing by and it set me to thinking how important coal was to our everyday lives when I was a little boy.
In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience,...
I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasn't good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.
The model that I'd always seen as a little boy, as a teenager, as I watched other political careers, I saw people who'd start off in local government, gain experience, move to state government, and then on to federal office. I'd always believed that ...
You can give men food and leisure and amusements and good conditions of work, and still they will remain unsatisfied. You can deny them all these things, and they will not complain so long as they feel that they have something to die for.
For the vast majority of world history, human life - both culture and biology - was shaped by scarcity. Food, clothing, shelter, tools, and pretty much everything else had to be farmed or fabricated, at a very high cost in time and energy.
I'm a small-town boy who comes from a traditional family on a tiny island called Belitung. I may not know where I'm going, but I'll always know where to come home to.
