My childhood in Arlington, Va., a middle class suburb of Washington, was uneventful. Ours was a very intellectual family, and we were encouraged to read at a very early age.
I really believe I'm no different from anyone else. I just had a few challenges I had to learn from at a very early age.
To be told that one can be dependent on one's parents until age 26 should strike a young person who wants to grow up as demeaning, not as something to celebrate.
Every age has found some alternative to American values appealing. The number of Western intellectuals enamored of fascism and all the various expressions of Marxism was legion.
Civilization is so hard on the body that some have called it a disease, despite the arts that keep puny bodies alive to a greater average age, and our greater protection from contagious and germ diseases.
I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.
We now have an opportunity, though, to do something we didn't do in the industrial age, and that is to get a leg up on this, to bring the public in quickly, to have an informed debate.
I was a very sickly kid. While I was in the hospital at age 7, my Dad brought me a stack of comic books to keep me occupied. I was hooked.
When you are raised Catholic, there is one thing that you are confronted with at a young age, and that's death. You're confronted with all the big issues - and that sparks deep questions, like what the hell are we doing here, anyway?
Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.
It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.
It was at this moment that I wrote my first important paper in theoretical physics. I was 32 years old, 5 years beyond the alleged age of senility for theorists.
Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity.
For me, the end of childhood came when the number of candles on my birthday cake no longer reflected my age, around 19 or 20. From then on, each candle came to represent an entire decade.
I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel.
In Turkey, you're not allowed to be left alone in the hospital. The nurse teaches the family how to do things, and somebody is always there with the patient.
Growing up, my mom made us this amazing thing called The Mack Theatrical Wardrobe. It was a massive trunk filled with everything that you'd want as a kid if you were into imagination and play.
They say you don't want to meet your heroes, but those two guys, you do want to meet them, because they do not disappoint. Walken has this amazing sense of humor, and Pacino is like just a sweetheart of a guy.
And my first film was Carnal Knowledge, another amazing experience, largely because of Mike Nichols, who would tell me you can't do anything wrong because you're doing everything right.
It's easy to write for God and about God, because what a thrill to remind the church that the Holy Spirit of God is in you. What a rush! What an amazing blessing!
It's amazing how these little guys can say things that a mortal human could never get away with. There's some sort of unspoken license... when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.
