My parents were disappointed I didn't finish college, and they were really upset when I went to Hollywood to become an actor. I was a big disappointment to them.
I had worked in this New York theatre company for my first eight or nine years out of college, acting and directing there, and I'd begun to write a little bit.
I started radio in 1950 on the Lone Ranger radio program, a dramatic show that emanated from Detroit when I was 18 years old and just beginning college. I did that for a couple of years.
The one thing that's always been the center of my political thinking - and it goes back to when I was 19 and editor of my college paper - is an abhorrence of the extreme.
In 1982, when I was almost 26 years old, I decided I wanted to write fiction. I'd majored in journalism in college, and I'd always assumed I would write nonfiction.
I don't have a college degree. I started working at 19 on a tiny newspaper. I've covered everything from weddings to crime to criminal weddings.
I was a hotshot as a junior. When I was 18, I really got into fiddling around. I completely lost interest in golf, and I guess all I could think about was going to college, getting married and having babies.
I was only in college, unfortunately, for, um, a year. I think my major was public relations, and I had no idea what it meant except it seemed maybe attainable.
Those of Manhattan are the brokers on Wall Street and they talk of people who went to the same colleges; those from Queens are margin clerks in the back offices and they speak of friends who live in the same neighborhood.
When I was in college my girl got me a job at the doctor's office she was working at. I was a file clerk. No disrespect but I don't think a man can do that job. It takes so much meticulous and precise file-keeping.
But in my college years it got to the point where my friends and I didn't do anything without consuming a massive amount of alcohol before we went anywhere or did anything, and you know that.
Charles and I go back since college. None of us thought this would happen, we just wanted to play basketball. This is the highest honor that can ever be paid, and it's mind-blowing.
College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?
I don't know if I'd want to do that anymore, because you always get bigger laughs on college campuses. So, when the film plays in front of a city audience, you've probably cut too loosely.
Never thought acting was something you could make a living at. It wasn't until I was in college, and got a lead in a play, that I began to realize I might just be able to blunder into this profession.
I have a wife and two boys. One is 18 and the other is 14. The 18-year old is getting ready for college next year and he made a decision to run track. He runs a lot like Michael Johnson.
In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite.
College is the grinding machine of the Mathematical Establishment, a conveyor belt that takes individuals from one cookie cutter to another so that the product comes within tight control limits out of the assembly line.
It occurred to me in my junior year of high school. I got my first letter from a big college. I still have that letter to this day - a letter from Indiana.
When you're a kid, you might be picked on for your differences. When you're an adult, employers, colleges, friends - people look for differences when you're adult, and that's what makes you shine and stand out.
If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on two areas learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.
