My very, very first moment on set on 'Lord of the Rings' in 2000 was me in a lycra suit, six and a half thousand feet up on a mountain in New Zealand, standing in front of 250 crew who were all wondering what I was doing - myself included.
The science can tell you that the thousands of pseudo-scientific parenting books out there - not to mention the 'Baby Einstein' DVDs and the flash cards and the brain-boosting toys - won't do a thing to make your baby smarter. That's largely because ...
Twitch is a platform. Switch it on, and you'll find thousands of channels of pure gameplay rolling around with people talking in the background. Dig a little deeper, and you'll also find people talking on camera, with sets built like an actual talk s...
A government that spoke of military glory as an aim would betray ignorance of, or contempt for, the spirit of nations and the age. It would be an error by a thousand years. Even if it should initially succeed, it would be interesting to see who in th...
Women should not feel obliged towards any men for eternity. They earned this privilege by gathering berries, digging roots, picking wild rice, and chewing the skin to make it soft for 999 thousand years, while the men were having fun in the open chas...
The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is ...
I remember in the spring of 1971, a hundred thousand people converged on the Pentagon in June of 1971. They threw blood; I guess it was goat's blood or something, on the steps to the Pentagon. People were being accused of being murderers and baby kil...
This first print run of the first edition of my first novel, 'When The Lion Feeds.' back in 1964, is so rare it can fetch several thousand pounds at auction. I always wanted to be an author, and I decided to write about what I knew.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one...
I work in the house next to where I live. We bought a smaller house that I use as my office and the place where my two employees work... We've got tens of thousands of letters from kids stored all over the house in places you would usually put dishes...
In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being...
During those snowy New England winters, besides learning to rise at five to study calculus and trudge two miles through the drifts for breakfast down the road, he had suppressed some tremendous element in himself that took form in a prudish virginity...
You don't have to pretend with me, you know.' He reaches out and tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. His expression is so open and honest I feel it like a sucker punch. 'I used to pretend, all the time, so I can spot it a mile away. If you're fe...
Running efficiently demands good technique, and running efficiently for 100 miles demands great technique. But the wonderful paradox of running is that getting started requires no technique. None at all. If you want to become a runner, get onto a tra...
I'm still dropping dishes thinking in slow motion about the GPS woman in Mom's car. I imagine her beckoning me from outside the kitchen window illuminated like some robot-angel calling me forth to the Lexus where she will ferry me off to that planet ...
This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea--if you gaze...
Then, for no reason I could tell you, I tossed the spool again, even though Elaine had asked me not to. Maybe only because, in a way, him chasing a spool was like old people having their slow and careful version of sex - you might not want to watch i...
He smiled at her as Julia threw a snowball at Calla that missed her by a mile. Grinning, Calla quickly armed herself and threw one at Julia; only it missed her too and hit Guthrie in the crotch. Good thing it was soft snow. He grinned and wiped off t...
Every Forsaken in a mile radius can probably hear you. You’re just asking for trouble if you two don’t stop whipping out the measuring stick.” “It’s his fault,” Avery snaps, pointing at Julian. “Shut up, ya wanker.” They start in on e...
I had a head for religious ideas. They were the first ideas I ever encountered. They made other ideas seem mean....I had miles of Bible in memory: some perforce, but most by hap, like the words to songs. There was no corner of my brain where you coul...
Each food items in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles....If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce we would reduce our country's oil consumption by o...