I like using traditional beliefs in my fantasies, even though I always end up warping them to suit my purpose: it somehow makes everything feel more 'solid' if it's got a long history behind it.
I can read a newspaper article, and it might trigger something else in my mind. I often like to choose in historical fiction things or subject matter I don't feel have been given a fair shake in history.
I've become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting, which is a style of parenting that... basically, the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so.
When you are 'world building,' people will oftentimes judge how well you built your world. They want to know: Is the culture believable? Does it feel like it has a history? I try very hard to pay attention to details.
I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know wha...
I thought of the idea of Summly in March or April 2011. I was 15 years old and I was revising for some kind of history exam. The problem was I was trying to find information that was useful to me. When you type into Google an esoteric term, you get q...
Instead of being a page-turner, 'Moby-Dick' is a repository of American history and culture and the essentials of Western literature. The book is so encyclopedic that space aliens could use it to re-create the whale fishery as it once existed on the ...
While being in the right seat at the right game might create short-term reassurance, I can't get over the idea that really what people feel is that their club is being run by a group of guys who know the history, study the heritage and view Villa as ...
I've always been fascinated by the Norsemen, their lives, history and cosmology. The more we study them the more interesting they become... breaking their own stereotypes. We usually think of them as barbarians, but there were aspects to their societ...
I have always been drawn to the Restoration period of Charles II. I have a soft spot for Charles Stuart, who was always loving and kind to the opposite sex. The members of his court were fascinating, and Barbara Castlemaine was one of the greatest co...
The history of the past, a hundred years from now, won't be the history of the past that we learned in school because much more will have been revealed, and adjectives we can't even imagine will have been brought to bear on what we did learn in schoo...
I always have traveled with a camera throughout my life, but I always had my old 35mm film camera. When I was training to go into space, the only equipment there was a digital camera. I went through a fast-track class on Earth. It actually was fun, t...
I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we've worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers f...
When I turned 16, I got my driver's license like the rest of my classmates, but I also got an extra present: a two-day practice session in a Formula Ford: my first open-wheel racing car and the first step on the ladder toward becoming a professional ...
Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you'll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it...
My earliest, most impactful encounter with a book was when I was seven and awoke early on Christmas morning to find Roald Dahl's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' in my stocking. I had never been so excited by the sight of a book - and have possibl...
Every day in our house is like Valentine's Day. I've kept it traditional with what my dad has done with my mom. Every morning, I get up and I make coffee and I bring Giuliana coffee in bed.
I grew up on film sets and I had a ball. It wouldn't have had nearly as much fun if my dad had been working behind a desk somewhere. I remember being on the set of 'The Godfather: Part III,' and all the kids were running around and doing crazy things...
My dad worked for different companies that made whiskey for a long time, so we were definitely whiskey drinkers. Growing up, my friends would get toy cars, and I would get swag from whisky companies.
As spokesman for Lipitor, I have been an advocate of preventive medicine in addition to my work with the Jarvik 2000 Heart, which has rescued people from death and sustained a patient with a normal, mobile lifestyle for seven and a half years - the l...
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fa...
