Jobs had always been an extremely opinionated eater, with a tendency to instantly judge any food as either fantastic or terrible. He could taste two avocados that most mortals would find indistinguishable, and declare that one was the best avocado ev...
When I was coming up as a kid, there were programs that kept me out of trouble and on the straight and narrow in South Central Los Angeles, and I always felt that when I got to a stage where I could provide similar opportunities to kids then I would ...
I'm a very lucky guy. I had so many people help me over the years that I never had many problems. If I had a problem, I could sit down with someone and they would explain the problem to me, and the problem become like a baseball game.
It would seem that I, who never could make much sense of physics when I was at school, have now gained a strong sense of Einsteinian space-time. I am free of the nimbyism of now, and feel a strong kinship with both the dead and the unborn.
I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of ...
I didn't believe when I was first told that I have cancer. I thought, 'How can a young person like me get cancer?' I thought it could never happen to me. It took me a while to realise that I was diagnosed with cancer.
As far as writing or directing a film, I've worked with enough people who have done that that I know it's just a whole other level of responsibility and chaos and murder that I could not see happening. For now, I'm just going to see what comes. I kno...
I used to work as a volunteer in a hospice, but I don't have any nursing skills or cooking skills or anything, so I was what they call an escort. I would take people to the support groups every night, and I would have to sit sort of on the sidelines ...
I always could hit, but fielding I had to work at. I took as much pride in fielding as hitting. I became a complete ballplayer. I knew when to take the extra base. I knew about the outfielder hitting the cutoff man. I knew when and how to bunt. I kne...
Now, the term 'friend' is a little loose. People mock the 'friending' on social media, and say, 'Gosh, no one could have 300 friends!' Well, there are all kinds of friends. Those kinds of 'friends,' and work friends, and childhood friends, and dear f...
I used to write my books at night when I was a freelancer with no children. I used to really work in huge spurts - I could turn around a revision in two weeks, I used to be able to write 10,000 words a day. It's like, 'Wow, what happened to that?' Th...
I've never really found inspiration for story ideas in the news, but I'd say it certainly affects our lives in so many ways. I would say that certainly the stories of the day appear in the work - I just have never gone so far as to say, well, this pa...
I used to watch the old 'Flash Gordon' series on TV, and it was thrilling to rocket to the planet Mongo every week. But after a while, I figured out that although Flash got the girl and all the accolades, it was really Dr. Zarkov who made the series ...
I've said this before, but after 'That '70s Show' ended, I solely wanted do films that inspire me, and to work with people who make me better. I wanted to just surround myself with people who I think are better than I am, whether they're actors or di...
Whatever our bedtime was as kids, we could stay up an extra half hour if we were reading. My parents didn't care as long as I was under the spell of a Stephen King or a Douglas Adams. Now I read in bed. I read at work. I read standing in line. It's l...
I don't find myself interesting as a person and the details I find boring, quite frankly. You could sum it up in a few words or sentences really: came from nothing. Self-educated. Luck. Energy. Curiosity. Ambition. That's it. Nothing at all can illum...
Neil Gaiman has reached a masterful stage in his writing where he deserves his own adjective, which could be extended to younger writers following in his wake: Gaimanesque. His work, while variegated, exhibits a unity of vision, voice, and tone that ...
I was a bartender in New York and I overheard this girl saying she made $3000 doing a commercial. A kid at work told me, 'Hey, I know this director and he'd really like you!'. So I walked into this guy's office and was like 'I was thinking maybe I co...
The artist doesn't really think about consequences - he or she does the work, stands back and looks at and thinks, 'Hmm, that could have worked better like this.' But as a person who needs to sell tickets to do the next work, one needs to analyze how...
I spent about seven years during the Vietnam War flight-testing airplanes for the Air Force. And then I went in and I had a lot of fun building airplanes that people could build in their garages. And some 3,000 of those are flying. Of course, one of ...
Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968...
