Not long before my mother died, I found a long-lost portrait of Jane Franklin's granddaughter, Jane Flagg, aged nine - oil on canvas - in the basement of a public library not a dozen miles from my mother's house.
Dr. Alan Grant: [Grant throws a branch at the inert perimeter fence] I guess that means the power's off. [Grant grabs the fence, pretending to be electrocuted and Lex and Tim scream] Lex: [Grant smiles at Lex and Tim] That's not funny. Tim: [laughing...
I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben...
My son, who's on the spectrum is a very rigid thinker. He needs clear-cut definitions of right and wrong. Anything hazy or gray confuses him. For instance, if I try to get him to see that a friend behaved badly, he'll often get upset with me because ...
The last time I saw Ted Kennedy was a generation after my first meeting, at the Senate subway below the Capitol on Obama's Inauguration Day. He was his usual gregarious and gracious self - with beaming smile and booming voice wishing my husband and m...
[voice over] Lorenzo: Young protesters spoke about how they'd change our lives and fix the world. But while they shouted their slogans, my friends and I went to the funeral services of the young men of Hell's Kitchen who came back from Vietnam in bod...
I have three younger siblings, so the four of us were outside all the time after school playing games, making up games. My sister made up a game called 'roof ball.' We'd play that constantly. She always beat me in it, and it made me very mad. But we ...
In addition to myself and a number of others, President Clinton talked about the deficit and the debt issue. And he pointed out, really, what I pointed out, which is that when he left office, we actually had projected surpluses for a long period of t...
It's time for a recovery and reassessment of North American thinkers. Marshall McLuhan, Leslie Fiedler and Norman O. Brown are the linked triad I would substitute for Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, whose work belongs to ravaged p...
I'm tough, I'm pushy, I'm really loud. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about it. But we only have so much brain capacity, so if I'm spending part of my brain thinking about how I'm acting, A, I'm not spending all of my brain doing, and B, I'm ...
There are those who advocate, and those who do. I'm not trying to slight my peers, but there is a difference between using a soapbox and actually getting your hands dirty. I've spent not only years and millions of dollars but hours and hours and hour...
In my new IFC comedy game show, 'Bunk,' we actually use our intern Patrick as a human timer - giving contestants the time it takes for him to wade through a bag of broken glass for a razor blade, to get gum out of his hair, to pick up every strand fr...
It's kind of a mysterious process, but something will catch my attention, and I'll make a note about it. I may even write a few pages about it, and then I'll put it aside, but I'll sort of keep it in mind. Then as time goes on, other things will gath...
That's a part that's always a challenge for athletes: trying to keep the passion alive while knowing it's still your job. There's no question that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, I'll be pretty burned out. And when that time comes, ...
There used to be three networks, and now there are 40 million networks. There's a lot more competition out there, too. We would bring in 27 million people. Now, they're lucky if they have 17. I looked at the ratings, for the first time in 25 years, j...
Club culture is always going to be a reflection of youth culture, but I think we're maybe moving into a time when the club is a place where older people can go, too. And it's a place people go to connect to themselves, it's not always about the party...
My grandmother taught me how to read, very early, but she taught me to read just the way she taught herself how to read - she read words rather than syllables. And as a result of that, when I entered school, it took me a long time to learn how to wri...
I've said before, the number one thing that we have to work on is protecting the gay community from sharia law. Now, in the United States, it's probably not a big issue right now, but my brother-in-law is gay, and his partner and I would like them to...
'The 5th Wave' is sci-fi, but I tried very hard to ground the story in very human terms and in those universal themes that transcend genre. How do we define ourselves? What, exactly, does it mean to be human? What remains after everything we trust, e...
Randal Graves: This has gotta be the weirdest thing you've ever been called in on. Coroner: Actually, I once had to tag a kid that broke his neck trying to put his mouth on his penis. [Randal sorrowfully looks down, remembering his cousin Walter]
[Jet describes the Nano-Machines] Jet: The message mentions bone marrow so they must know about the Nano-Machines. Faye: And so? Jet: That's all I have. Faye: So ends yet another episode of 'Wasting Time with Jet'
