I went to school with Steven Wright, who was the shyest guy I knew, and one day someone suddenly told me that he was in a club doing standup comedy. I went down to his club and he was great. Another friend of mine, who was pretty much a thief by trad...
Before I was an actor, I was never able to hold a job for more than 3 months for some reason. It just wouldn't hold my interest, so there was some way that I wound up quitting or getting fired from it. But being an actor is perfect, because movies us...
I have always lived in Amsterdam. During the war, we inhabited the Rivieren neighborhood where many Jews lived at the time. Our downstairs neighbors were Jews, and there were also Jews a few houses from us. We saw how they were rounded up and taken a...
When I began writing in the mid-1960s, I thought it was not important for readers to know whether I was male or female. Also, I was a great admirer of E.B. White, so I may have thought that it would bring me luck to submit my first manuscript as 'E.L...
If I wanted to do TV full-time, 'Breaking Bad' is definitely the type of project I would want to do. But TV is not my favorite thing in the world. I definitely want to focus on film. It's what I grew up loving. It's always been about movies, movies, ...
The people at my label are always endorsing what I say. They say, 'You see the truth, so speak it.' They believe in me. They respect my opinion. At least I have an opinion, and I'm not trying to play it safe. I don't go around saying, 'I think everyo...
I use the Clarisonic electronic skin cleansing system. It's great for removing excess oil and make-up and leaves my face feeling really smooth and clean. Then I apply Avon Anew Rejuvenate Day Revitalising Cream and Creme de la Mer Eye Concentrate. I ...
I love New York, and I'm drawn to a certain intensity of life, but I've just never felt like I want to escape from the Midwest. A writer lives a great deal in his own head, and so one intuitively finds places where your head is more clear. New York f...
I became an air display pilot. I used to teach it. I was an examiner for a few years as well. It was great fun. I would still be doing it now if pretty much everyone I knew who was doing it hadn't died. In the first team I joined there were six peopl...
Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we're less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are n...
I don't know if I have a 'Greatest Album Ever.' I really liked 'The Blueprint' by Jay-Z. The production on that album was really great. 'All I Need' was the first song I used for walk-on music in 2002 for my second time ever on stage, so that means a...
I do this thing at every party: I go to a party, I stand around for, like, 45 minutes, and then I turn to my wife and say, 'I think we should go home.' And then we leave, and then I wake up the next morning and say to my wife, 'We don't go out anymor...
I would love to be a field biologist. I would love to do what Jane Goodall did, just totally immerse myself in the life of one specific species for years and study every aspect of its behavior until little by little, all of these patterns become clea...
I didn't want my records to sound like anybody else, and when I've got my guys in the studio, I have a language with those guys because we work together every day. A lot of times, you bring in outside guys, studio players, whatever, and they're great...
I only wash my jeans every eight months. I've got a pair by Nudie, and you're not supposed to wash them for eight months at a time to preserve the colour. They're really dark denim. Instead of washing, I just hang them out from time to time. It sound...
When Whitney Houston died, I felt great sadness. My sadness, of course, was about our collective loss - when you listened to this nightingale sing, your body would drop into a chair, your head would tilt up, a small smile would creep across your face...
I've always loved history, from my youngest memories. My father enjoyed the great stories of history, like Hereward the Wake, Robin Hood, and Richard the Lionheart, and he shared them with me. I went on to do a degree in history, though I found it ra...
I don't think you can set up a computer to do a strike zone on a guy who's 6-foot-5 and then a guy who's 5-8. Where does it draw the line? One guy stands tall, and another squats down, and it changes the lines. Nah. I still love the umpires; they do ...
I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got ...
It sucks to be the runner-up because I've been the runner-up for a long time in my career. I would get so close and then lose a huge movie and sometimes it's one kid who beats you out for three different movies. It's so frustrating at the time, but w...
I'm not a wildly gifted person; I don't play an instrument or speak another language or have great accomplishments in another field, as many writers do. But writing feels natural to me; the act of it seems to free up my unconscious, so that sometimes...
