When my husband and I were in our twenties, we thought it would be fun to take up cross-country skiing as a hobby. We were living outside Chicago for graduate school, the winters were long and hard, and the terrain was flat; it seemed a good way to g...
As a kid, we had one television channel and a sad little roller rink. And there was not much else to do. So I used my imagination all of the time growing up. That's the main way I played. When we moved and I went to high school, I did my first play, ...
I can still remember. I was ill, and I was seven, and my father didn't want me to just read children's books. He came with Conan Doyle. I tried, and I liked it. I think the first I read was 'The Sign of the Four'; 'Study in Scarlet' was the next one....
I'm Italian. I love to cook Italian food, so I learned from my dad how to make sauce and meatballs and all that stuff. With my wife and kids, I started making homemade pasta. The very first time, I didn't have a pasta maker, so I had to cut it with a...
Personally, I had a great education. My mum was a trained teacher, a Montessori teacher, and I know that I could not have written 'Eragon' if I had gone into a public school system because I would have just been too busy attending classes and doing h...
I've had a lot of fun, and when I talk to kids in journalism schools, I say, look, I know what the journalism teachers tell you that this is a great way to perform public service and all that, but I say the main reason, if you decide what you want to...
I used to cheerlead in high school, and I had the biggest crush on one of my teammates' brothers. I was a great tumbler, so when he showed up at practice one day, I tried to impress him, but I ended up landing on my face! When I got off the ground, I...
We had a great dramatics department in school, so I did a lot of plays and theatre there. Later, when I was the captain of our student's ward, I figured out that if you find something you really love to do, you don't have to work for the rest of your...
I don't want to ever say to somebody, 'You don't have to see it. It's not good.' I'm done with that. I'd love to just do things that I respect. That being said, I do have two children to put through school, so we'll see if I can put my money where my...
I DJ'd for years. I DJ'd in high school, and I think my parents thought it was a passing thing. And then when I was in my second year of college, I was like, 'Yeah, you guys don't need to send me money anymore. My DJ gigs are good enough. I'm selling...
I don't know about living on an automatic pilot, but I've had times where I've decided to just test myself and my mettle, and for no good reason other than it's what life is. Even before I was acting, I had, like, one day in high school I decided to ...
When I was in fourth grade... this wonderful teacher said you didn't have to write a book report, you could just talk about the book, you could do a drawing of the book, you could write a play inspired by the book, and that's what I did. I got to be ...
I had to act in a school play when I was about ten years old. I really didn't want to do it. But everyone had to do it so I didn't have a choice. A talent agent came and watched it and later gave me some work. It's funny because I'd always known that...
I learned hard lessons in life; I had to because I had so much happen: My mother died my sophomore year in high school. The next year, same day, my brother dropped dead. Two years after that, I got married because my girlfriend got pregnant. The year...
The kids started teasing me to get me to swear in Italian. Two or three months, I started retaliating. I found out I could whip these guys. So I'm always fighting, getting even. Even the girls in school, when they gave me trouble, I'd take a glove of...
Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever...
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that...
I like to act. I guess letting what you love be what you do is key. I've worked very hard for that to be the case, probably because I'm very lazy and I only want to do things that are fun and I run away from anything that feels like work... Acting fo...
I first considered writing 'New York' in 1991. I'd been in the city for a decade, was married to an American wife, and sending my children to New York schools. I was even on the board of a coop building. But I wasn't sure how to organize such complex...
When I first thought of the idea for 'Sweet Valley High,' I loved the idea of high school as microcosm of the real world. And what I really liked was how it moved things on from 'Sleeping Beauty'-esque romance novels where the girl had to wait for th...
Keep music and art alive in our schools because the greatness of a country is not measured by wars that are won, by territory annexed or even the size of a deficit. It is measured by the beauty of the art work by talented hands, the sounds of the mus...
