In some ways, it's better that Obama got elected than McCain. I'd rather be stabbed in the chest with an Obama steak knife than to have been slowly bled to death with McCain paper cuts. Say what you will, but Obama has brought about a patriotic and c...
No doubt many people have the feeling that to talk about death at all is, in effect, to conjure it up mentally, to bring it closer in such a way that one has to face up to the inevitability of one's own eventual demise. So, to spare ourselves this ps...
My life is fair game for anybody. I spent an unhappy, penniless childhood in Brooklyn. I had to slug my way up in a town called Hollywood where people love to trample you to death. I don't relax because I don't know how. I don't want to know how. Lif...
It's certainly in dreams of people, you know, that they do something big. Most of the time they keep it secret because, you know, it's more realistic, and often then you get braggarts who tell you, you know, they're doing something great, and you don...
I part of this great nation because my grandfather was born here, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He took a horse, back in 1895, and ride it all the way down to Guanajuato, looking for his American dream. No penny in his pocket, only dreams in his head. And he ...
I don't like going out on a date unless I know the broad a little bit beforehand. By the way, 'broad' to me is not a detrimental term for women; it's simply another word for female. Anyway, I don't really go out a whole lot, because there aren't many...
What I see in the Bible, especially in the book of Psalms, which is a book of gratitude for the created world, is a recognition that all good things on Earth are God's, every good gift is from above. They are good if we recognize where they came from...
I think, in a way, I invented the term 'fight club' and that these things have always existed, but they never really had a label. Nobody had a language to apply to them. I created that language in two words and I've been paid a great deal of money fo...
I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. I'm thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the w...
I wanted to fly the Millennium Falcon; I wanted to save the girl. In real life, you can't do all of that: NASA's budget sucks. We're still questioning whether we went to the moon or not, you know what I mean? So I said, 'Another great way to do all o...
Before I was an actor, I was never able to hold a job for more than 3 months for some reason. It just wouldn't hold my interest, so there was some way that I wound up quitting or getting fired from it. But being an actor is perfect, because movies us...
Back in the day for me was a great time in my life - I was in my 20s. Most people refer to their experiences in their twenties as being a highlight in their life. It's a period of time where you often develop your own way, your own sound, your own id...
I didn't want my records to sound like anybody else, and when I've got my guys in the studio, I have a language with those guys because we work together every day. A lot of times, you bring in outside guys, studio players, whatever, and they're great...
Life isn't about the final moments, it's about the journey, it's about process. What makes 'Rocky' work as a movie is seeing him working his way up from the streets to the arena and the fight of his life. You could just show that fight, and it would ...
I teach in M.F.A. programs now, and I think that's a great way to become a novelist, but I mourn that Pete Dexter and Joan Didion's route is maybe less likely because there are fewer of those jobs. I always liken it to playing piano in some great div...
By the way, movies are like sporting events in that you're as good as the movie you're in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token, you can do five...
I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it's im...
The reason socialism has failed around the world every time it's been tried is because people in socialist countries have looked at the United States and have said if they can have it that good, we can. It's a failed, flawed ideology, but if you ask ...
When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English. I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get ...
I have my great grandmother's recipe for black beans, all the way from Cuba, and I know how to make those. I'm actually pretty good at it now. But my first time, the beans actually exploded in the pot, so I had black beans just dripping from the ceil...
Yeah, like, when I look back on my life, I just remember back what happened in '74, or something. It seems like only the real good stuff comes to mind. I don't think of all the tragedies and all the funerals. That just doesn't come to mind at all. I ...
