My life as a working theorist began three months after this preliminary study and background reading, when Oscar gently nudged me toward working on a particular problem.
Every day, I read about new ideas and research that could help someone I care about live a longer and healthier life.
If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?
I hate going to bed. I read scripts, clean, listen to the radio - I've fallen asleep to 'This American Life' more times than I can count!
In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.
Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add.
I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that.
If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.
I love all the arts - so museums, theatre, music, walks near trees or by the ocean, time with people, psychological readings.
I'm most impressed by the Russian writers, so I love reading the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Another author who has informed the way I think is the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal.
I got a call on a Sunday. 'Do you want to do 'The Godfather?' I thought they were kidding me, right? I said, 'Yes, of course, I love that book' - which I had never read.
I've loved thrillers and spy stories since I was a kid. It's probably not a bad rule of thumb to write the kinds of stories you love to read.
I love Sherlock Holmes, but I love any of these old stories where the writer was paid by the word, so the adventures just continue forever. They are almost like they were meant to be read out loud.
I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.
I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.
Kellie Overbey gave me this play called 'Girl Talk.' I read it and totally fell in love with the characters. I told her she had to let me direct it and put Marcia DeBonis in it.
Reading and discovering fiction has taught me how to empathise, understand falling in love and all those complex relationships that people have to deal with.
No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.
Most of the words you know and love and use every day are not words you learned by looking them up in a dictionary and reading a definition.
I was terrible at maths, but I could grasp science, and I used to love to read about the lives of the scientists. I wanted to be a scientist or an inventor.
I love being on the beach - it's my favourite place. I can chill out, read, listen to music, play with my daughter.
