I'm still a little girl in Hawaii, I have the same friends I had when I was a kid who love me for who I am - not what I do. I never got caught up in the club scene or took wrong roads.
Even as a kid, I would always imagine horrible circumstances in which I would find myself in my head, and imagine how I would feel, and act it out a bit for myself, because I was a bit of a freak like that. I love doing things like that, and I get a ...
My first book, 'Fast Forward', was about growing up in the shadow of Hollywood and how kids are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of celebrity, and I've often felt the reason my work has an audience in the U.K. is because it's every...
My first job was when I was eight. I did this opera, which was a Robert Wilson/Philip Glass opera, called 'White Raven.' That was a very confusing and trippy creation tale, and I was a kid who brought up the sun and rotated the earth. It was very emp...
Now let's make Virginia Heffernan a man. Can you imagine the same kind of spittle-flecked rage directed at a busy working father who admits to feeding his kids Annie's Organic Mac & Cheese?
The adults said the only good food was the bacon, but the kids knew better. They had never had a more fun breakfast in their lives. Although they had to agree the bacon was very good. Then again, it was bacon. It was always good.
Language is always evolving. It's difficult to read Shakespeare now because language has shifted. Similarly, kids these days can get to the point really quick in about 140 characters or less because of these new tools.
When I was a kid, Jacques Cousteau was my hero and the person who inspired me to become an underwater explorer. I have many other people who inspired me after him, but he is still my all-time hero.
One thing I think kids need to do is more chores, and take care of their own rooms. Responsibilities are really important to start them with. If they have animals, they have to feed them and care for them. That's the only way I think I could do it.
It can be tough to find areas where Left and Right can agree. Consider the well-being of children: Americans often disagree about how to raise kids, how to educate them, even what to feed them.
Coming from Morocco was just different, man. It's a third-world country, and you are trying to make it happen. That's all it is. I didn't have any problem hooking up with the black kids because I'm from North Africa. And as far as Latinos, we are all...
I'm always struck by the kids who turn up in New York and LA, and places in between. Chicago. Wanting to do theater, wanting to do independent film. Wanting to break into television or radio.
It makes me feel tired about how guarded we are the whole time. Without even trying we're ready to make a joke of everything, serving up the day with big dollops of irony and derision and cynicism. As if. Sucked in. Kidding.
Ever since I was a kid, I might have been eleven or twelve. I'd be telling anyone who would listen that when I grew up, I wanted to be an artist.
People kept asking, 'What's your market?' I've got no idea at all other than me, an eleven year old kid in a 56-year-old body. But there are a lot of us out there.
I think I would have written more books if I'd had fewer kids or had them earlier, but I think the books in general would have had a little less spark to them.
But we're born as children and we look at the world with open eyes... And we don't judge and we don't betray. We're not jealous. We're not envious. We're not even weary, which is a danger also as kids. They have to learn a certain amount of awareness...
I wasn't always this confident. Growing up as the awkward gay kid in a small town in Pennsylvania, you're constantly told, 'Don't be yourself, don't be proud of who you are.'
We always seem to be a bit surprised that our children are reflecting stuff that we are showing them. I don't know about you, but every movie that I saw when I was a kid, I emulated. I was Haley Mills for an entire summer and had an English accent.
With scripts I've always looked at them and thought about kids, you know? Thought about the world and the impact... I won't do nudity and I never felt comfortable with that whole idea or things with huge sexual content - not my thing.
I'm very boring, really: I live on the Upper East Side, a block from the park. I have three kids. I go for a jog around the park every day with my dog.
