I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his.
I put forward a pretty general theory that financial markets are intrinsically unstable. That we really have a false picture when we think about markets tending towards equilibrium.
When I decided to take writing seriously, I did a lot of reading and analyzing of the books I liked, and came up with what I thought were pretty sound plotting and structure basics.
Even though I've been doing it for so long, I still feel fresh. Even when I walk out on stage, I still feel pretty much the same as I've always felt.
I remember that in '81, country radio was pretty pop, and everybody wanted a crossover record - and all of a sudden it came back to traditional. Now it's kind of swung the other way a little bit, but it always comes back.
I skipped kindergarten because I was reading at a pretty high level. That's a weird and cocky thing to say, but I was real sharp, and I knew that early on.
I think the first thing you should learn is how to roast a chicken. Once you can roast a chicken, you can pretty much figure out anything else. And who doesn't like roasted chicken? It's a classic.
I'm sure there's going to be some material from This Is Not Going To Be Pretty. I usually use that song to just introduce myself to the audience, although the patter in between the song is always different.
I remain a fan of my friend Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho.' I think as a book about New York in the '80s it was pretty excellent.
I was trained as a neurologist, and then I went into the theater, and if you're brought up to think of yourself as a biological scientist of some sort, pretty well everything else seems frivolous by comparison.
I'm sorry, but I can't imagine being an American icon! It would be pretty difficult to look at your face in the mirror and think of yourself as that without laughing and spitting toothpaste all over!
Speak from your heart, not your head. You speak from your head, you can wind up getting yourself in a lot of crap. You speak from your heart, I think you're pretty safe.
I guess I did get to tick a big one off the bucket list, though, and that was being on a giant billboard smack-bang in the hub of Hollywood Boulevard. That was... well, pretty Hollywood.
And I say in the book, 'Hard Measures,' that actually they were pretty wimpy if you really - if the American people actually knew what these techniques where, they would say, what are you talking about?
What do cells do when they see a broken piece of DNA? Cells don't like such breaks. They'll do pretty much anything they can to fix things up. If a chromosome is broken, the cells will repair the break using an intact chromosome.
In the very beginning, Yelp started as a service where we really didn't think people would write reviews for fun. The whole concept of user-generated content was pretty nascent in 2004.
My guide had a copy of Palestine on my last trip to Gaza. He'd bring it out and show people what I was trying to do. That usually went over pretty well.
Is there anyone out there who is the next Steve Jobs? I think Jeff Bezos is pretty close. He is very smart. He is extremely creative. He has completely reinvented the way in which commerce is done online.
I pretty much got into theatre to do community theatre and things, but then I went to Williamstown and found an agent. I then went to New York and did a lot of theatre there, so I started doing only theatre.
I live in Los Angeles where there is not that much in the way of theatre, so the La Jolla Playhouse is pretty much the only place that is on my radar, and when they have something going on, and I am available, I will certainly go in.
That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them and then you never know where the hell you are.
