As well as being blind, Ma turned out to have the same mental illness that her mother had had. Between 1986 and 1990, she suffered six schizophrenic bouts, each requiring her to be institutionalised for up to three months.
My son Beau got very ill when he was just four months old in Majorca. He contracted a really bad case of gastroenteritis. Everything feels so much worse when you don't speak the language, and you need that reassuring conversation as a mum, but you ca...
My father was only thirty-one when he died of a heart attack, much too young for a father to die and leave his young wife with five rambunctious little kids to take care of. I was the youngest. Only a couple of months old when he died.
Don't judge me. You wanna judge me, put on a black gown and get a gavel. Get in line with the rest of them that's about to judge me. I got court dates every other month. It's me against the world - that's how I feel.
In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are...
Man is in a transition stage; he has 31 pairs of spinal nerves which keys him to the solar month, but the nerves in the so-called cauda-equina - literally horse-tail - , at the end of our spinal cord, are still too undeveloped to act as avenues for t...
Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn't I be allowed the ot...
By working hard we could make an average of about $5 a week. We would have made more but had to provide our own machines, which cost us $45, we paying for them on the installment plan. We paid $5 down and $1 a month after that.
Filming is quite exciting because every day is different, but it can involve long hours standing around in chilly locations. Theatre is a very different challenge because every night you're striving to keep it fresh, even though you might have been p...
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General.
Runners exalt the marathon as a public test of private will, when months or years of solitary training, early mornings, lost weekends, rain and pain mature into triumph or surrender. That's one reason the race-day crowds matter, the friends who come ...
They have the big ferris wheel and we've been out of town for two months, so he just was like, 'Mommy I want to go to Toys R Us and I don't care if you have a movie coming out and all that.' He was just being a kid. But I had to allow him to have tha...
In recent months, the emotional aspect has become as necessary to me as the physical. It amuses me, this strange quirk of mine. I want my little captive to love me, to care about me. I want to be more than just the monster of her nightmares.
When you have a little 10-month-old who is climbing up your leg because you are their mountain - there's no nobler reason to get out of bed every day. There's no better reason to live, to make sure you provide as much guidance and as much room for th...
I own that it is a good deal of a mystery to me how judges, of all persons in the world, should put their faith in dicta. A brief experience on the bench was enough to reveal to me all sorts of cracks and crevices and loopholes in my own opinions whe...
On 'Paranormal Activity,' it worked to my advantage not to have much of a crew, but on a bigger movie, where you have to work with a larger group of people who basically become your second family for a few months, it can be a great experience. Even t...
I'm a simple hillbilly. I don't like eating modern, industrialized, fast food. I grew up eating home-cooked food. So when I'm traveling abroad, like when I recently received a six-month writing fellowship to Iowa in the U.S., I like to cook my own fo...
I learned to cook in self-defense. My wife doesn't know what a kitchen is. In the first month of our marriage, she broiled lamb chops 26 nights in a row. Then I took over. I used to mind her not caring about food, but no more - as long as I can eat w...
You don't lock into a ten-year family budget. You take it a year at a time - maybe even six months at a time. And then if the income really comes in the way you hope it does, then you can make some of those expenditures that you've been waiting to ma...
I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He - I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.
Sometimes I get kind of bored if I go like a month or so and I'm not doing anything. At first I'm like, 'Cool, I'll have a little time off and I'll get to hang out with friends,' but then after a little while goes by I'm like, 'Oh,' and I really wish...