Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write, an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also, in a way, gave me permission to write about northern Montana.
I spent two years living in London - I'd have stayed for ever if I could have got a work visa. It was there I started collecting vinyl and fell in love with the sounds of the 1970s.
Mason: I just feel like there are so many things that I could be doing and probably want to be doing that I'm just not.
I know how I like to be treated, so I always start by saying, 'Could you give me a moment of your time, I know you're very busy,' and usually, they will.
After the war, prompted by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, I entered Parliament so that a priest could speak out for the poor, as canon law at that time still permitted.
Many of us spend half of our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.
Usually, jet lag is not this big of an issue for me. I'm not sure why I'm so disoriented this time. It could be due to the amount of chocolate and french fries I've eaten in the last two and a half weeks.
There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation.
One could see that what you are writing was that today's meeting with President Bill Clinton was going to be a disaster. Now, for the first time, I can tell you that you are a disaster.
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
If you ask me if I think I will be sober in 24 hours time I can say yes, but in two years I can't tell you. I could be dead.
All I could do at school was paint and draw and that was the only time I ever passed any exam. It was the only thing I ever got right at school.
The process of making a movie has expanded in terms of effort and time for the director, doing commentaries for the DVD for example, finishing deleted scenes so they could be on the DVD, and doing things like a web blog.
I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities.
I knew at the time that that wasn't the part I would be doing, they just wanted a screentest so they could have a look at it to show to the directors and producers. Then they wrote a part for me or maybe they already had it in mind, I don't know.
On weekends, the U.S. was casual; in Italy the weekend was very formal. I came to understand that weekends are about free time, and that one could wear high quality, tasteful products that weren't so formal.
Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.
I couldn't kill a chicken, I couldn't kill a cow - I was a vegetarian too at that time - so I thought, well what is there that I could kill? I couldn't kill this and I couldn't kill that.
This was the first time a woman in Dallas had won public office of any kind - even women questioned whether or not I was qualified, whether or not I could take it.
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet.
I remember when I first walked into Mayer's cavernous office. You had to walk 50 yards to get to him, and in that time he could really study everything about you.
