My heart burnt within me with indignation and grief; we could think of nothing else. All night long we had only snatches of sleep, waking up perpetually to the sense of a great shock and grief. Every one is feeling the same. I never knew so universal...
While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything. I was ...
I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American President of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. But there's still more we have to travel along this road so...
My earliest drawing is a supposed Carracci. It wasn't very expensive, I guess, because they don't know if it's a real Carracci. But it has all these seals on it of people who've owned it, and one of the great portrait painters of England, Reynolds, h...
While I was in London it was completely upside-down. I got a whole new life and it was a challenge to keep in touch with my life in Ireland, but it was great fun. Now though, I've been back home since November and gradually all connections with my HP...
Mike Leigh taught me about making choices - as an actor, you choose between being honest and clever, and with Mike, it's always about being honest. I learned how to behave on a film set from Jim Broadbent. He was a great example of someone with a fan...
I don't know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.
The one thing I miss is hitchhiking. Now there's no more of that. When's the last time you saw a hitchhiker? It's not that I consider it a great sport, but it was my way of seeing the country. The open road, especially in the western United States, i...
I myself was born beside a river - the Avon in Sarum. So when I first encountered New York's great harbor and the Hudson River as a teenager, and came to understand their historic canal and railroad links to the vast spaces of the Midwest, I felt bot...
It's always great when a director is just supportive of what you're doing. They're not so much critiquing you but giving you more ideas, giving you tons of things to work with, making you question your character and making you think about it... and m...
Key West is the place where your sickly house plant back in New York grows to 10 ft. It's also the place where an 8-ft. cactus, the century plant, produces a huge yellow flower every great once in a while, like a robot proffering a bouquet. After the...
Criminals look at identity theft and say only 1 in 700 criminals gets convicted of it. And they look at check forgery and they know that for every 1,400 forgers arrested, only about 123 get convicted and about 26 go to jail. So the rewards are great,...
Hope and Crosby made seven 'Road' movies, starting in 1940 with 'Road to Singapore.' The movies were always about Crosby and Hope fleeing America and finding Dorothy Lamour in some exotic location. Bob's character was cocky and cowardly; Bing's chara...
My life has been such a blur since I was 18, 19 years old. I haven't even had time to contemplate my own life. By forcing yourself to write your life story you learn a great deal about yourself.
Generally speaking, I don't think people know a great deal about the Viking culture, apart from the label that is usually attached to them, either pillagers or deviants who came and brought back loot to Norway. It was an incredibly sophisticated, com...
'I Want To Hold Your Hand' is a great classic by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, I sure love that song. I did like the classic version, a rock-oriented song, then someone heard me do it with the Grant Green approach - Grant Green and Larry Young did ...
In the '60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn't just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at...
I bought a piano once because I had the dream of playing As Time Goes By as some girl's leaning on it drinking a martini. Great image. But none of it worked out. I can't even play Chopsticks. But I've got a nice piano at my house!
Werewolves were far more terrifying than vampires. It is probably the idea of seeing the human within the beast and knowing you can't reach it. It might as well be a great white shark. There is no sitting down and discussing Proust with it, which the...
I'm just attracted to the action element of science fiction. It's great to sit in the editing room with the director and sound engineers and to create the feeling where your heart is racing and you're sitting at the edge of your seat and you find you...
I fantasised about F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' - I loved it, and then I read everything J. D. Salinger had to offer. Then I was turned on to Kerouac, and his spontaneous prose, his stream of consciousness way of writing. I admired him so...
