My family was going back to England to visit my mother's grandmother, who was very ill. We went up to Liverpool and I met my great-aunt, who was just a force of nature. She was an elocution teacher and a huge enthusiast for theater and the classics. ...
In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices h...
I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a novel that was the novel I wanted to write, and got a couple of good reviews but no real traction. I had no idea how to get a ...
The one man other than my father who made the most lasting impression was an uncle, Serge B. Benson. He taught me in three different classes - but above all, he taught me lessons in moral, physical, and intellectual courage that I have tried to apply...
I've decided to run for the U.S. Senate because I believe Wisconsin families need a senator who will work hard to deliver results for the middle class - a leader with the courage to do what's right, no matter how tough the odds or how powerful the sp...
You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now mo...
I took physics, and lo and behold, there's a lot of physics in 'Lost.' I think for most people, liberal arts educations are more abstract, but for me, it's been a chance to apply the things I've learned more directly. I also took some Folklore and My...
I feel like I hadn't given that many classic films, like, a really good chance. I watched 'Casablanca' a really long time ago when I was like, 12. I didn't like it that much, and then when I saw it again in class, I loved it.
I looked for acting classes in Paris just to do something different than modeling. And then one day I just thought, 'Okay, that's enough, I have to start doing something.' I went to the acting agency and I just told them I wanted to act and asked the...
I don't think, generally speaking, people become writers because they were the really good, really cool, attractive kid in class. I'll be honest. This is our revenge for people who were much better looking and more popular than us. I was a bit like t...
If you think about it, candidate Obama, Sen. Obama, was running on sort of long-run economic issues, like restoring prosperity to the middle class, dealing with the perennial problem of health care in the United States. He talked a lot about the budg...
My 94-year-old grandmother has always been so inspiring to me. She is kind, smart, brave, and independent. After graduating number one in her medical school class at a time when it was extremely rare for women to attend medical school, she worked wit...
I try to do a variety of physical activities. I spin, take classes at Barry's Boot Camp, go to the gym, use home DVD's of ChaLEAN Extreme workouts, which I think are brilliant, and I run around after my three girls. Also, let's be honest. The amount ...
Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair ...
I grew up in the Fifties, and the majority of people in my class had fathers living at home. I was very aware that I was in the minority. I had a foreign name, and my daddy didn't come and pick me up from school. I felt like an outsider, which probab...
I grew up on the Southside of Chicago. What people don't realize is that my father was a multimillionaire who owned 12 hotels, motels, a steel mill, a radio station, a club, nursing home, and a law office. So I think it's safe to say I'm a little abo...
My deal is have a flat, simple tax. And - Americans want - Americans I hope - aspire to be - be wealthy. I hope they aspire to have a better quality of life. And we have this class warfare that's going on now. And I don't agree with that. I'm interes...
In a novel, I think you have a contract with the reader to make the character representative - of a moment in history, a social class... for instance, I wanted to make the boy in 'A Boy's Own Story' more like other gay men of my generation in their y...
We were postwar middle-class white kids living in the slipstream of the greatest per-capita rise in income in the history of Western civilization; we were 'teen-agers' - a term, coined in 1941, that was in common usage a decade later - a new, recogni...
I didn't think it sounded so much different than anyone else's voice until I got to the broadcasting school, and I raised my hand to ask a question of the school president, and he said, 'See me after class.' And the rest is history.
I always have traveled with a camera throughout my life, but I always had my old 35mm film camera. When I was training to go into space, the only equipment there was a digital camera. I went through a fast-track class on Earth. It actually was fun, t...
