'The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq,' by Hanna Batatu. Few may wish to take on this massive, obscure work, but it changed my life, and I love it.
I was three years old when I started drawing. I did it all my life.
Call me an over anxious, middle-class mum, but my eight-and-a-half-year old son looks very much, to me, like he's headed for a life of crime.
I have to tell you I never in my life anticipated getting this old, this fast. It seems as if I were 25 just a few days ago.
I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.
Everything has the potential to be extraordinary, whether an old photograph, a book or a life. If you find it ordinary, you simply need to take a closer look.
I was 38 years old when we started trying to have a baby. I thought it would be no problem, but the 3 years it took us was the most difficult period of my life.
When you come into our house, you get a flavor for our life, our travels, our kids, our 18-year-old poodle who is like, blind, deaf and incontinent but so happy.
My second record was all about big ideas - I was trying to make big statements about the culture, about life. I think in a certain way, I was a 27 year old kid with a guitar.
'Showgirls' was a critical point in my life. I had my head handed to me. At 21 years old, I had to find my self-esteem again. It was a very hard time.
I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend.
It's really a drag to sit around when you're old, and think, 'Ah, gee, I never went to France.' Go to France. Life is very short; you've got to pack it all in there.
The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that, compared with 1509, or even 1939, life in 2009 is sweet as honey.
In Pakistan, the right to go to school is not a given. In the more rural areas, a girl is born, married off as early as 9 years old, and basically lives life under the control of men.
But most importantly, we can all be donors. It does not matter how old you are, your race, where you live; all of us can give the gift of life.
Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis.
Instead of the traditional emphasis on the sanctity of life, bioethics began to stress the quality of life, meaning that many damaged humans, young and old, don't qualify for personhood because their lives have lost value.
If a man wishes to truly not be written about, he would do well not to write letters to 18-year-old girls, inviting them into his life.
One can spend too much of one's life locked in stuffy rooms seeking out obscure truths, searching, researching, until one is too old to enjoy life.
In some cases I feel like they haven't appreciated enough that growing up doesn't mean boring and old and not full of life. I like to talk about that also.
I now get to have the life I wanted when I was 18 years old. Now, I'm like, 'I can buy any skateboard I want.'
