As I got into my teens, I started reading better books, beginning with the Beats and then the hippie writers, people like Wallace Stegner up in Northern California, and all the political New Journalism stuff, the Boys on the Bus dudes and Ken Kesey.
You know, at 35 or at 38 or 40 you really start to see what your body could look like if you just don't do anything all winter long. So that's another motivating factor, our vanity.
We could all do with a bit more joy in our lives couldn't we? The wonderful thing is that when we start spreading joy, we begin to actually experience more joy in our lives too!
I started writing lyrics out of desperation. I was broke and wondering where my next job, my next meal was coming from, although I had had several successful revue songs on Broadway.
To be fair to the Inquisition, they only used confessions extracted after the torture had ended, which let them claim that admissions had been freely given; the fact that the torture would have started again if they hadn't confessed was a minor detai...
It started when I was eight years old. I first heard the cello on the radio, and I loved the sound. It was such a magical, beautiful sound. I dedicated my entire childhood to cello, practising like crazy.
I bled a lot. I got hit across the face. We couldn't film for seven days. I got hit, whacked, underwater, across the face. I finished the shot, got into the boat and blood started coming out.
Emotions are messy and hard to figure out. Hard to know where you start and the next person stops. Even as an adult, that's a hard thing to know. As a kid, it can be really confusing, because it's all new and you're trying to sort of make your map.
I worked at this bike shop called Rockville BMX, and I started going on this summer tour with this one company. One summer, we ended up in California, and I got to hang out with the guys who made 'Freestylin' - Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman.
I had started losing weight. I mean he didn't know anything about the journey that I was on at that point obviously but from my highest weight of just over 300 pounds I lost about 45 pounds.
I realized that in those nine seasons I started out at about 225 pounds and I felt, you know, full figured fabulous woman but in those seasons I gained 75 pounds up to over 300 pounds all in front of the nation.
I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, ' .’ It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings.
Like patents - which also seek to protect the little guy - unions were started for all the right reasons. But like patents, they can be twisted into something that hurts innovation, competition, and ultimately consumers and the country as a whole.
According to the standard model billions of years ago some little quantum fluctuation, perhaps a slightly lower density of matter, maybe right where we're sitting right now, caused our galaxy to start collapsing around here.
I'm in college at North Carolina State University. I'm about to start my sophomore year and have an apartment on campus with three buddies I've grown up with. I get to be normal when I'm there, and then I tour Thursday through Sunday.
I am a zombie fan, but all of the zombie stories I've enjoyed started when the dead rose and ended three days later with everybody looking exhausted. I was thinking, 'What happens in 20 years?'
A friend of mine has a son who became deaf through meningitis. He called me one spring and asked me to keep a week out of my schedule because he wanted to start a school for deaf kids. I wanted to help.
I used to teach kids when I was younger. When I was about 14 or 15 I started teaching children drama and something that I used to say to them was, 'Don't be afraid.' People would be afraid of forgetting their lines or something.
Don't count me out… I have been built and strengthened by life’s battles. When you think I'm tired; I'm just getting started. When you think I'm dead; that's when I'm most alive.
Day starting with a smile leads you to that place where even imagination is quite hard. Smile and make your day bright since the beauty of smile is priceless and its a language that all the people around world can understand.
I had forgotten how thrilling a snow day is until my son started school, and as much as he loves it, he swoons at the idea of a free day arriving unexpectedly, laid out like a gift.
