I was happy when I got into film school. I'd simply satisfied my ambition to show them that I could get in - nothing else - although I do believe they shouldn't have accepted me. I was a complete idiot. I can't understand why they took me. Probably b...
Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy...
If I'm going to be honest with you, when I trained at school, I feel like I was training to be a chameleon. I want to be that versatile actor who can do anything - that's why you learn fifty different dialects, you do Shakespeare, you do commedia, yo...
Unless we're talking about old-school, witchcraft-trial violence, can we please phase out the phrase 'girl crush?' While we're at it, if we can axe 'like, total girl crush' unless Total Girl Crush is the name of a fizzy soft drink, in which case I'll...
When I got out of undergrad, I had a degree in theater and telecommunications. My first job, I was a news reporter for the local stories for NPR. Then I was a country-western DJ. I did data entry for a yearbook company. In my mid-20s I went back to g...
If your kids see what you eat, they will probably eat it, too. I'm not going to use the old-school policy of what my mother did and say to my kids, 'Well, if you are hungry enough, you will eat what I put on the table!' I think my kids have an unders...
Creationists have also changed their name ... to intelligent design theorists who study 'irreducible complexity' and the 'abrupt appearance' of life—yet more jargon for 'God did it.' ... Notice that they have no interest in replacing evolution with...
Carl’s abuse isn’t obvious. It’s not something one can even notice while it’s happening. Carl doesn’t do you the favor of punching you in the face and sending you to school with a black eye so that you have a fighting chance of being rescue...
I was in school - I was a good learner; if I wanted to get something done, I could get it done. I was lazy, though. I was always, like, sort of an outcast. And when I got home, I was always doing music, but when I was doing music, no one was there to...
The more we rely on the market, the more hooked we become on its promises: Do you need a tidier closet? A nicer family picture album? Elderly parents who are truly well cared for? Children who have an edge in school, on tests, in college and beyond? ...
I am quite international. My background, born in Turkey. My family is a Jewish family from Iran, so I went from Turkey to Iran to Israel, and then grew up in Italy and ended up in U.S. for graduate school. So I tend to look at things from an internat...
I started out mopping floors, waiting tables, and tending bar at my dad's tavern. I put myself through school working odd jobs and night shifts. I poured my heart and soul into a small business. And when I saw how out-of-touch Washington had become w...
I didn't see myself any different from my white counterparts in school. I just didn't! I thought I could do what they did. And what I didn't do well, I thought people were going to give me the opportunity to do well, because maybe they saw my talent,...
I'm born and raised in Mexico. I only spent eight months in the States, but definitely English is a really big part of my life, and I love it. Thank God my mom put me in American school because I'm able to be working in the States, and it opens a lot...
When my husband and I were in our twenties, we thought it would be fun to take up cross-country skiing as a hobby. We were living outside Chicago for graduate school, the winters were long and hard, and the terrain was flat; it seemed a good way to g...
I can still remember. I was ill, and I was seven, and my father didn't want me to just read children's books. He came with Conan Doyle. I tried, and I liked it. I think the first I read was 'The Sign of the Four'; 'Study in Scarlet' was the next one....
I'm Italian. I love to cook Italian food, so I learned from my dad how to make sauce and meatballs and all that stuff. With my wife and kids, I started making homemade pasta. The very first time, I didn't have a pasta maker, so I had to cut it with a...
Personally, I had a great education. My mum was a trained teacher, a Montessori teacher, and I know that I could not have written 'Eragon' if I had gone into a public school system because I would have just been too busy attending classes and doing h...
I've had a lot of fun, and when I talk to kids in journalism schools, I say, look, I know what the journalism teachers tell you that this is a great way to perform public service and all that, but I say the main reason, if you decide what you want to...
We had a great dramatics department in school, so I did a lot of plays and theatre there. Later, when I was the captain of our student's ward, I figured out that if you find something you really love to do, you don't have to work for the rest of your...
I don't want to ever say to somebody, 'You don't have to see it. It's not good.' I'm done with that. I'd love to just do things that I respect. That being said, I do have two children to put through school, so we'll see if I can put my money where my...
