I know that at literary festivals I'm speaking mostly to middle-class women, who frequently vote in a way that is contrary to how I'd like them to vote.
I remember when the wave of Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek and these beautiful Hispanic women came into light, and I looked up to them and I loved them, but I was like, 'Where are Middle Eastern women?'
I never played the 'decoration,' I always played the one who suffered. And then I got very lucky in my middle career, when I started playing the hero, which at that point was quite rare for women.
The Middle East is more angry than ever. I'm afraid that the sort of deceit on the route to war was linked to the lack of preparation for afterwards and the chaos and suffering that continuous - so it won't go away will it?
My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.
With Vietnam, the Iraq War, so many American films about war are almost always from the American point of view. You almost never have a Middle Eastern character by name with a story.
There's no better way to test a person than to put them in the middle of a war. That's clearly going to show what kind of a character you're telling a story about.
Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics rememb...
I wasn't good at school.
Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?
Since he'd stepped out of medical school, all he'd ever done was fulfil the same three basic templates, again and again and again. The possibility of infinite variation had led only to convergence.
And I understood why he didn’t need friends or to be accepted at our shitty racist high school, because he had his music, and that was so much better than anything we had to offer.
If teachers are uncomfortable at their own school, they will pass on their uncertainties or negative attitude to students.
Why are you staring at my boobs? My face is up here,” Trudy exclaims. Jack, the hotel employees, and I jump back like we’ve been electrocuted while the seniors don’t skip a beat. No. She. Didn’t. These geriatric devils are so bad.
The growth of art seems to be in cycles, and often its vigorous lifetime is restricted to a century or two. The periods of distinctive drama, Greek, English, Spanish, fall within such a limit; the schools of painting and sculpture likewise; and, in p...
Violence is a problem we all want to solve. I want to make sure that kids learn to deal with anger by learning how to talk with people to solve problems. Here in the United States Senate I want to make sure we have safe schools, safe neighborhoods an...
In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas...
The whole point of art school is that you're going to be able to have nudes all day long and a teacher who is there to move you. It's great. I did a tiny bit in the one school in Paris, and it was wonderful because you'd have a nude taking a crazy po...
Mental acuity of any kind comes from solving problems yourself, not from being told how to solve them.
A good problem is something you don't know how to solve. That's what makes it a good puzzle and a good opportunity.
Your feelings are the utmost priority, your desires are more important than anyone else's deadline or mandate.
