One Saturday in 1984, I walked into my first AA meeting. I went regularly for six years and only stopped when I came to realize my underlying problem was not genuine alcoholism, but depression.
You want a lesson? I'll give you a lesson. How about a geography lesson? My father's from Puerto Rico. My mother's from El Salvador. And neither one of those is Mexico.
One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read.
It may be something to do with my having been to a girls' school, but I'm far more comfortable making male friendships than female ones. My friends tend to be men and their significant others.
I had a face-lift, and I would have another if I needed one. It definitely changed my life. I'm not vain. In fact I don't like looking at myself. The face-lift was just about looking rested.
I don't exactly fit well in leather pants, so I don't rock that look. I lost my hair a long time ago, so no hair-metal look, either. I had hair down to my belly button at one point, but I think that was the '90s.
I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.
Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World' is my ultimate karaoke song. It is a wonderful world. People forget we only have a certain amount of time, and it can all end at any moment. Armstrong and Frank Sinatra's 'My Way' are the ultimate one-two pu...
I was running to catch a train when one of my teachers saw me. He thought I was fast, time me, and later gave me my first instructions in sprinting. I happened to be at the right place at the right time.
I grew up with my stepfather in Brighton, but I did spend a lot of time with my natural father, and I was loved by both, so I suppose the advantage of this was that I wasn't bound by one set of experiences; I always had an alternative.
My first taste memory is pickle. Even as a kid, I was really weird. I liked chillis. I used to climb up the shelves in my grandmother's pantry. The pickle jar was kept right at the top. One time, I dropped the jar and it broke. I was totally busted.
Evelyn Couch: I can't even look at my own vagina! Ninny Threadgoode: Well I can't help you on that one honey.
Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter: [voice over narration] The one thing I could do, and the only thing was box. I had tasted my own blood and I loved it.
The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.
I've been offered jobs by companies that supported apartheid many times in the 25 years of my modeling career, but I have never taken one of them. I have to refuse that money, because I'm not going to work against my people. They've suffered enough.
In 1981, I borrowed 2,000 pounds - a lot of money back then - paid 50 quid for a seat, packed my own sandwich, and hopped on a plane to America. It was a mighty leap, but one that paid off. A week later, I got a job called 'Remington Steele.'
There was one thing my daddy wouldn't tolerate in any shape, form or fashion, and that was being unkind or rude to somebody. That was just very important to my folks. And as it turns out, that was a legacy that he left me that money can't buy, is how...
One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But... I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
I think I was one of those kids that I might not fight you if you stepped on my shoes or stole my lunch money or that kind of stuff. But if you picked on a girl or something like that, that would cause me to rear up a little bit.
Still, I have been no one's enemy but my own. My easy nature, either in drinking or anything else, was always ready to submit to persuasions of profligate companions, who often led me into snares.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.