I admit at the beginning that 'popular religion,' 'demotic religion,' the pieties of the common folk, tends to sink to the lowest common denominator, be it in syncretizing saints with old, half-forgotten pagan godlings, or in preferring the nasal whi...
The Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka, knows exactly how the political bluff works and uses it to spread lies among the people. What he has done to this country is assassinate the dignity and respect of good citizens while centralising everything into hi...
So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve ...
Wars fought over a face like this,” he murmured like he was talking to himself, my heart stopped beating and his thumbs moved lightly across my cheeks. “A man would work himself into the ground for it, go down to his knees to beg to keep it, endu...
A novelist's job is almost to be a stupid as possible, except in the cunning moment when you need to structure something, when you need to be very intelligent indeed. The rest of the time, you need almost an empty mind, where you can let any image in...
Those who aren't following Jesus aren't his followers. It's that simple. Followers follow, and those who don't follow aren't followers. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into a society where justice rules, where love shapes everything. To foll...
[Northrop] Frye was concerned mostly with literary criticism, and myths interested him as structural elements in works of literature. He used the word myth to mean story, without attaching any connotation of truth or falsehood to it; but a myth is a ...
For many of us, work is the one place where we feel appreciated. The things that we long to experience at home - pride in our accomplishments, laughter and fun, relationships that aren't complex - we sometimes experience most often in the office. Bos...
I'm from a working-class family. We didn't have a lot, but we had the arts. You're talking to a guy who is making a living at doing what he loves doing - acting, singing and dancing. So any career ups and downs were not that significant to me; the on...
I grew up in Skaneateles, a small town in New York's Finger Lakes region, where parts of my family have lived for five generations. I can walk the streets there and point out my father's childhood home, the houses my grandfather built, the farm where...
I was from such a large family that when I first met my wife, I told her: 'You can go work outside of the house and I'll stay home and continue making my cartoon strips. Maybe I'll make some commercials nearby, you know I'll do anything locally, but ...
I always wanted to be a zookeeper when I was growing up, and I've wound up a zookeeper! I've been working with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years! I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet because my life is divided absolutely in half - half animals and h...
I worked in corrections because they had told me I wasn't going to make it in the music business. You know, when somebody tells you you ain't going to make it 'cause you don't have a look - you're too black, you're too fat, you're too short, and at t...
I have really long hair, so I don't cut it all that often. Sometimes, when I'm working, I just have the stylist on set trim it for me. I don't dye my hair. When I was a teenager, I dyed my hair five colors at one time. It was all different shades of ...
I can't change my bra size. They're natural! I can work out and I can stay healthy and motivated, but I can't change some things. I really just live my life. I love my body. It's what God gave me! I feel confident with myself, and if that inspires ot...
I've learned I'm rarely able to stay at home and not work. If I try to 'just sit on my couch for a little while,' I am going to grab my laptop and just knock out a few more emails, or start sketching up some product ideas for TheMuse.com. So when I w...
For the past few years my fans have made it very clear that they would like to read my novels and revisit my family of characters faster than I can write them. For them, I am willing to make a change to my working methods so the stories in my head ca...
I am the first one to go to university in my family. I am the first writer as well. My dad is a retired policeman, and my mom works for a glass-processing company. She is health-and-safety manager, and my stepfather is a plumber. I have four half sib...
I work out like a maniac, three times more than anything I did in the past. I am off carbs, salt, sweets, and live on a fish diet. And I promise I am not going to indulge in food again. See, when I was 49 years old, I was fine, but the moment I touch...
Throughout my life, I have tried to share my belief that getting and staying healthy doesn't have to feel like work. My life is not about deprivation; I don't diet or slave away in a gym. What I do is eat clean, nutritious, real food. I enjoy delicio...
I was a teacher most of my life, which I loved. I had a very happy working life, and when I retired, I thought I must do something, and I've always read a lot of fiction - you learn so much from fiction. My sentimental education came mostly from fict...
