The competition has improved tremendously. In 2003, I could teach a guy how to play poker in an hour and he could win some money. Today, it would take days. The game has gotten so much tougher. So I will spend my time with my family and play when I c...
My mother is a huge fan of my work. I told her about 'Coraline' long before the film was made, and she got the book and read it. She reminded me that when I was about five years old, I used to sit in the kitchen for hours and talk about my 'other' fa...
My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to...
I moved from Moscow to Rome with my family and two bicycles in 1998, and spent a lot of that year- and the next - obsessed, I am sorry to admit, with the bicycles. Italy, after all, was a place where thousands of middle-aged men felt perfectly comfor...
My first trimester I was so exhausted. I could sleep 10 hours, then wake up, look in the mirror and still have eyes like a hound dog! I felt like the life was sucked out of me, no matter how much sleep I got. It was obvious that my body was really bu...
I am going to take something I learned over in Israel. Their Independence Day is preceded the 24 hours before with Memorial Day, so it gives them a chance to serve and reflect and then celebrate. I am going to try to start that tradition here in Amer...
I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction. I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change hel...
The deepest change begins with men raising children as much as women do and women being equal actors in the world outside the home. There are many ways of supporting that, from something as simple as paid sick leave and flexible work hours to attribu...
Because I became a refugee in Macau during 1941, we had this war in Hong Kong, I fought for the government as an air raid warden for 15 days. Our government surrendered, Hong Kong Government surrendered, so I took a junk and came to Macau in 16 hours...
Now that I have a 16-month-old son, my weekend ritual has changed - but it's better than ever. We get up early and go for a walk on one of the hiking trails near my home in Los Angeles, then meet up with friends at a diner. There's nothing better tha...
We began our 'Luxe Life' and 'Vegas DeLuxe daily columns' not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and we've spent a decade bringing you showbiz stories and star scoops. I hope it continues for a long time to come because I honestly feel that all t...
If you were a kid in 1955, you would pick up a copy of 'Popular Science' and it would say, 'This is the kind of car you're going to be driving in five years or in 20 years you'll be able to take a jet plane from New York to London in four hours,' or ...
My mum and dad ran a family cafe in Sligo for 35 years and worked long hours. We grew up in a very hard-working family and had a lovely atmosphere, as we lived above the restaurant. It definitely made me want to work hard, whatever I chose to do. As ...
The most important factors for a long life, I think, are partly in the genes; number two is lifestyle, which includes healthy diet and regular exercise. I walk, run and swim every day. However, I think too much exercise is also unhealthy because of o...
I wasn't a rebel. It kind of clicked in my head, like, if I want to do this, I can go out and do it. Some kids, it clicks for them, and it doesn't work out. But thank God for me it did work out. I put in all those hard hours of work, and it has gotte...
We engineered activity out of our lives in the name of convenience. We created foods that put fried, fatty, sweet, and salty ahead of fresh, natural, and healthy. We quickly sacrifice sleep to work longer hours in pursuit of the American Dream. Even ...
We'd all survive if Twitter shut down for a short while during major riots. Social media isn't any more important than a train station, a road or a bus service. We don't worry about police temporarily closing those. Common sense. If riot info and fea...
Sometimes I get real mad at God. And it's funny, those times when I've been real unhappy with the world - and I've gotten mad and yelled and wondered if there even was a God - I've had some of the most profound life experiences within hours of reachi...
I've been saying for a couple of years now that people need to let God out of the Sunday morning box, that He doesn't want to just be with you for an hour or two on Sunday morning and then put back in His box to sit there until you have an emergency,...
I believe many people feel like God is mad at them. One day I put a post on Facebook that said, 'God is not mad at you.' Within a few hours, we literally had thousands of positive responses from people saying things like, 'That is exactly what I need...
When I was growing up, I was obviously gay, and I got heckled every day of my life. The only way I knew how to survive was to make people laugh. If I could make them laugh, I wouldn't get hung in a locker for two hours. That's a blessing.