One of my proudest achievements is that when an authoritative book about Hungarian literature came out about a decade ago, there was a little article about me which said I was a Hungarian writer but pretending not to be. Bearing in mind I can hardly ...
I feel like a lot of people in the hip hop world don't take me seriously as a rapper, and I feel that first-and-foremost I came up as a rapper before I started singing. All a lot of people know from me is 'Cupid's Chokehold,' and they don't scratch t...
That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could ...
When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and...
Time, plenty of it came to the rescue here: Kelly was to engage in self-expression. In Jake's vocabulary this was a vague term applied to activities like swearing and children's art but in the present context it evidently meant something more specifi...
I can't learn everything in a few months, Charles. Magic came first. Stupid hierarchy of egotistical penises had to take a backseat." "Penises don't have egos. And what about the women in command? They can be pretty damn bitchy." "The women have bigg...
What I would say is Jesus came to save lost sinners like you and me, and if Jesus Christ has a burning desire to seek and save the lost, then you should, too, if Christ is living within you. If you don't have a concern for the lost, then I am concern...
Her vision came into focus and again this time the trees crackled and mocked her. You’re going to die you silly bitch, they seemed to chant. They waved their branches, howling, as the wind whistled through the trails which had suddenly grown icy co...
My cut is blunt and futuristic, and Nicki Minaj started wearing that bob on her head after she came to my show, so at the end of the day, I know what I do, and I know what I possess, and I know who I am. I'm a trendsetter. The biggest form of flatter...
Orwell clung with a kind of wry, grim pride to the old ways of the last class that had ruled the old order. He must sometimes have wondered how it came about that he should be praising sportsmanship and gentlemanliness and dutifulness and physical co...
People use the words "beginning" and "end" to describe the start and end of things. However, "beginning" is really the event of coming together when energy gathers, and "end" is simply the dissolution of that energy. That which came together can easi...
Although I could read before I went to school, and I won the school reading prize at five years old, my early children's stories came from the radio and watching films at a cinema on Saturday mornings in Australia. It wasn't until I was nine years ol...
She glared at me like she was about to punch me, but then she did something that surprised me even more. She kissed me. "Be careful seaweed brain." She said putting on her invisible cap and disappearing. I probably would have sat there all day, tryin...
I've struggled a lot to get where I am. I initially got rejected by every producer. But no complaints. I enjoyed each and every moment of the struggle. My first break came in 1997 from Krishna Vamsi and then Puri Jagannadh, who is my closest friend. ...
When coal came into the picture, it took about 50 or 60 years to displace timber. Then, crude oil was found, and it took 60, 70 years, and then natural gas. So it takes 100 years or more for some new breakthrough in energy to become the dominant sour...
My father came from a country called Bolivia. He was of Spanish descent. I never went to Bolivia until I was 60 years old, but apparently when he was 17, he had already planned his entire academic curriculum so that he could graduate high school and ...
If you want to be a good parent then be a great leader. You should live a life with passion for someone and something. The legacy you leave your children shouldn't be how you suffered in gratitude for a life you had no passion for. Rather, it should ...
When I was a child, I lived in Morocco, and I would always buy a lot of beads from the markets and to make jewellery for friends. Later, at 18, I would do my own clothes and make my own patterns. When I first came to New York, people just assumed I w...
My real musical discovery started when I was 10 with Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5, and acts that I connected with because they were young when they were doing it, like me. Then I kind of came into my own a couple of years later; I found new artist...
It was in 1931 that the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “the American dream.” The American dream is not just a yearning for affluence, Adams said, but also for the chance to overcome barriers and social class, to become the best t...
So many people always try to help me carry my luggage and help me do things I can do myself. If I can do it myself, I'm going to do it myself. I'm not going to let other people do it for me, and I think that's a big part of where I came from. I'm not...