My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.
In the early days, I had everything to prove. A very working class lad with a burning ambition. A very crude way of measuring success is how much you are worth.
I sang in the coffee houses of the country in the early '60s with no idea of success in terms of records or television. I just thought I was a storyteller. I didn't even think of myself as a singer.
It was in the early 1960s that my late revered teacher, Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel, became the first major Jewish theologian in America to enter into dialogue with Christian theologians on a high theological level.
I graduated from high school early so I could move to New York to do 'A Little Night Music' out of the New York City Opera.
Growing up, I never listened to English music. I was more into Motown, as well as early rock n' roll like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
What I like to do when I get to a new place is buy local music early on and listen to it while we're driving around. I think it helps explain and illuminate the culture of where you are if local music is playing.
I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.
I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years, both as a player and a vocalist, particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century.
My favorite bands were Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, Uriah Heep, Grand Funk Railroad. If you listen to some of my early music, you can hear it.
The whole world has changed much since the '80's. In the united States, rap music and country music dominate radio and that certainly wasn't the case in the early '80's.
I began playing drums when I was seven and guitar when I was fourteen, but it wasn't until the early '90s that I took music seriously.
Mammograms are really sort of a gift. You can either catch something early or count your lucky stars because nothing was discovered. Either way, you're ahead of the game.
I was up late last night yapping about the elections on CNN and up early this morning doing the same thing in my daughter's kindergarten class.
My friends and I would get up early and take our horses through the national forest. My mom was very free. It was always 'Out of the house!' There was no watching television on weekends.
My own early crusade for same-sex marriage, for example, is now mainstream gay politics. It wasn't when I started.
I started making movies in the early '90s, a few years after I discovered 'the cinema' during a three month stay in Paris during which I watched 100s of films.
I was a huge Muppet fan growing up. I want to bring it back to the early '80s Muppet movies, when the scripts could have been performed by humans.
A lot of high school students on TV and in Broadway are played by people in their late 20s and even early 30s. That seems weird to me.
We don't want to show our hand to the fan base or give up too much too early.
Parents - especially step-parents - are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.
