One day in '61, I was looking in the Santa Monica phone book for a number, and there it was: Stan Laurel, Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I went over there and spent the afternoon with them. And pumped him with questions. I must have driven him crazy. ...
Many people look at their past and bemoan their mistakes. Those errors in judgment, behavior, hurting others, and the wrong decisions may be what consumes them now. It does not have to be that way, for recovering from a traumatic situation is all a m...
When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you? The two are so, so different. One is an infinite consciousness capable of being and creating whatever it chooses, the other is...
I have had quite a few obsessive fans. They write to me and then they turn up at signings and look really sheepish. If I said 'boo' to them, they would run away. I think they maybe believe I could take over their lives and sort them out. If they saw ...
I was awkward-looking with huge brown eyes, dark brown, pencil-straight hair styled into an old-school Romanian bowl haircut from the 1980s. And I was very, very small. I was always the tiniest kid on my street and in my classes at school... The gym ...
We just got a tour bus. I didn't know tour buses could be this nice. It's just me, Brian Haner the guitar guy, the tour manager and a writer. We laugh ourselves silly. Apparently we're going to have a road dog, a miniature pincher. It's the smallest ...
Before there was an American Story, before Paterson spread before Oscar and Lola like a dream, or the trumpets from the Island of our eviction had even sounded, there was their mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral: a girl so tall your leg bones ached just ...
The book that is the closest genetically to 'Goon Squad' is 'Look at Me.' It has the futuristic element - although, freakishly, almost every aspect I invented has come to pass in some way, including the terrorist who fantasies about blowing up the Wo...
Also, I think having that comic gene kind of makes you look at things in a different way. If you take yourself so seriously, eventually you end up one of those people having a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on their lives. You see them drawing the curtains an...
Memes can be visual. Our image of George Washington is a meme. We don't actually have any idea what George Washington looked like. There are so many different portraits of him, and they're all different. But we have an image in our head, and that ima...
As ugly an admission as this is, I met my wife at a party, and if I had been to the same party and she were dressed in different clothes, I might never have talked to her. She might have projected something that I found distasteful, even if she other...
Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest...
I rebelled by not getting straight A's and not following the path that my elder sister did. She was valedictorian and is very exemplary in her way. I look a lot like her, so I just had to do the opposite. Not that I got bad grades, but I was all abou...
We are all a little weird. And we like to think that there is always someone weirder. I mean, I am sure some of you are looking at me and thinking, “Well, at least I am not as weird as you,” and I am thinking, “Well, at least I am not as weird ...
There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix any...
Juno MacGuff: ...and the receptianist tried to get me to take these condoms that looked like grape suckers and was just babbling away about her freaking boyfiends pie balls! Oh an Su-Chin was there and she was like, "Hi babies have fingernails." Fing...
[Dodgson is meeting Nedry at a restaurant in Costa Rica] Dennis Nedry: [waving] Dodgson! Lew Dodgson: [sitting down] You shouldn't use my name. Dennis Nedry: [loudly] Dodgson, Dodgson, we've got Dodgson here! Nobody cares. Nice hat. What are you tryi...
John Hammond: [Ellie is going out to the maintenance shed to switch the circuit breakers, the dinosaurs are on the loose] It ought to be me really going. Dr. Ellie Sattler: Why? John Hammond: Well, I'm a... And you're, um, a... Dr. Ellie Sattler: Loo...
Hannibal Lecter: Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence. Our Billy wasn't born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse. Billy hates his own identity, you see, and he thinks that makes him a tran...
Jack Crawford: Starling, when I told that sheriff we shouldn't talk in front of a woman, that really burned you, didn't it? It was just smoke, Starling. I had to get rid of him. Clarice Starling: It matters, Mr Crawford. Cops look at you to see how t...
[to Rotelli's charred and smoldering corpse] Joker: Your pals, uh, they're not bad people. Maybe we, uh, outta give them a couple of days to think it over. [shakes head] Joker: No? [looks surprised] Joker: Grease 'em now? Well, OK. You are a vicious ...
