I happened to fall into a job that wound up being a seminal piece of television history, which was a show I did on HBO called 'The Wire.' That experience really set the bar for me and opened a lot of doors. It also gave me a lot of street cred in ter...
England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.
Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He's always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them...
I have never seen a picture of my mother. My mother's family never owned a photograph of her, which tells you everything you need to know about where I'm from and what the world was like for the people who gave me life.
Soon we saw that money going to women brought much more benefit to the family than money going to the men. So we changed our policy and gave a high priority to women. As a result, now 96% of our four million borrowers in Grameen Bank are women.
When I was young my Father used to tell me that the two most worthwhile pursuits in life were the pursuit of truth and of beauty and I believe that Alfred Nobel must have felt much the same when he gave these prizes for literature and the sciences.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help... Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business - you didn't b...
I've always believed that a good twist is one that, when it is presented to the audience, half of them say, 'I saw that coming.' And half of them are completely and totally shocked. Because if you don't have the half that saw it coming, then it wasn'...
When it was over, I was so happy, I felt like crying. I wanted to win this one for Casey. After what I did in Brooklyn, he could have forgotten about me and who would blame him? But he gave me another chance and I'm grateful.
After high school, I went to Stanford University and majored in English. Of course, that gave me a chance to do lots more reading and writing. I also received degrees in London and Dublin - where I moved to be near a charming Irishman who became my h...
I think the ideology of the Congress is closest to mine. Congress is a party where I should be. I have joined politics to bring change in society. The Congress gave me a chance with the Aadhaar project. It's a party that will allow me to bring change...
I always think about which blood drive was going on in Georgia that day when that husband or mom or school teacher rolled up their sleeve and actually gave me a second chance at life. It's the ultimate gift of life, and I'm the one who was on the oth...
You eventually have to figure out how to balance the books. So that's the reason I gave up my day job to come do this was to go fight to create the space where spending matches America's capacity to tax, and that means economic growth and a smaller, ...
When the Nobel award came my way, it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions, including literacy, basic health care and gender equity, aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.
My husband gave up all his work to stay at home with the kids, and we split all the duties at home. I do all the boring stuff - like pay the bills, and he does all the exercising for both of us, which I'm very grateful for... I thank him for it regul...
I always knew I wanted to be a character in the movies. When I was growing up, I had to have a lot of surgery, and I spent a lot of time recovering at home and in the hospital. Watching movies took me away from my own problems and gave me a total esc...
I think the advent of the Internet gave us all a big boost, because by the time the Internet became mainstream and you could get it in your home, a lot of us were used to dealing in fan culture, writing to magazines or anything at the back of comic b...
In one sense, the stories I read betrayed me. Too few gave me back my mirror image. Fewer still spoke to, or acknowledged, the existence of the problems I faced as a black foster child from a dysfunctional and badly broken home.
They gave me four weeks, and I asked if the first week could be just music with the two main conductors. So, the conductors came over to my home, and we worked in the music room, and I learned my two little songs.
For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying.
I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.
