When I first moved to L.A., I discovered Roy London. I didn't know anything about the arts, the profession; I had no technique, I knew nothing, I'm fresh from Missouri. I sat in on a few classes, and they just felt a little guru-ish and just didn't f...
I've had to ban my mum from coming to see me play. She gets so nervous before any show. I've always got a few nerves but she's so much worse than me. You'd think she'd be able to handle that kind of situation. After all, she is a concert pianist.
We were playing a fair, and a few people were handing me stuffed animals and flowers, but one person handed me a paper sack. So I took all the stuff back to the bus. I put the sack in my lap and opened it, and a live iguana jumped out of the sack and...
I miss 'EastEnders.' I loved it. But I was exhausted when I left. They asked me to go back recently - they've asked a few times. I am tempted! But my husband Scott says you have to really think about it. Because, towards the end, I was so exhausted a...
It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we’ve had over the last decade ...
[F]or all its reputation for conservatism, cricket in its history has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for innovation. What game has survived subjection to such extraordinary manipulations, having been prolonged to 10 days (in Durban 70 years ago),...
I don't know anybody else who lives 1,000 miles away from their job and gets to commute back and forth. The owner said, 'You can live in your beloved Swifton, but don't you dare miss a game.' I had a few close calls, but I didn't miss any.
I just want to tell you what it's like not to have Planned Parenthood... you have to give your kids Ramen noodles at the end of the month to fill up their little bellies so they won't cry. You have to give them mayonnaise sandwiches. They get very fe...
I did the pilot, and when they came through and said they were going to put it on the air, I had already some dates in the book with my band and so on. So Barry did the first one, he may have done a few more than the first one in the series, and I to...
Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in innovation. But too much protection can strangle competition and can limit what...
For better or worse, zoos are how most people come to know big or exotic animals. Few will ever see wild penguins sledding downhill to sea on their bellies, giant pandas holding bamboo lollipops in China or tree porcupines in the Canadian Rockies, ba...
The people you think are the happiest are usually the saddest; that's because they see more and feel deeper than others do. They are the sensitive and they see beyond the veil of what's tangible and what's not. They wear no masks and can see through ...
She had felt good for a few moments, racing across the face of the hill on her old bike, but the happy feeling had burned itself out and left behind a thin, cold rage. She was no longer entirely sure who she was angry with though. Her anger didn't ha...
Ahead now, I think you'll see the big nations shrink back into their own corners of the world. I'm not saying we'll see no international trade, but it will be nothing like the conveyer belt from China to Wal-Mart that we've known the last few decades...
My father was a sea captain, so was his father, and his father before him, and all my uncles. My mother's people all followed the sea. I suppose that if I had been born a few years earlier, I would have had my own ship.
Ordell Robbie: [Sits in silence for a few moments, thinking, then finally realizes who stole his money] It's Jackie Brown. Louis: Well, if she got to it, why didn't she take it all? Ordell Robbie: I'll be sure to ask that bitch before I blow her brai...
Gender-dominated environments are not good... particularly in the financial sector where there are too few women. In gender-dominated environments, men have a tendency to... show how hairy chested they are, compared with the man who's sitting next to...
I've been a runner a long time. When I first got into it, I started doing small triathlons in Chicago, and I just did it to get in shape. When I got out of college, I put on a few pounds like everybody does. I did it when I was in my early 20s, but I...
I feel like every time I start up, it's like a truck you have to get into 15th gear, so you very solely crank into that mental space where you feel really immersed in the world of the book and then you can just kind of go. But there's just that few d...
At the time I was writing 'Weedflower,' my friend Naomi Hirahara was writing a book about Japanese-American flower farmers. She knew quite a few elderly farmers and put me in touch with four or five of them who had been in camps during WWII. Some, li...
I was spending a lot of time in Mumbai after I met my husband, who is Indian, and while parts of the city were prospering like crazy, I couldn't quite make out how the new wealth had changed the prospects of the majority of city residents who lived i...
