I once got a letter from a woman who told me she was 90. She said if she were 30 years younger, I would have had to watch out. I guess 60 seems really young when you're 90. She said she would eat me with a spoon.
Culturally, I have always been part of the proletariat. I lived side by side with the sons of glassblowers, fishermen and smugglers. The stories they told were shaper satires about the hypocrisy of authority and the middle classes, the two-facedness ...
A generation ago, or two, when there were three channels, plus PBS, and when you needed - when you needed 15 million people to make a living, the media could focus on the broad country. And most people had no choice about getting political informatio...
If I were to do a foundation, it would be to promote solar energy. And I'm worried about drilling for oil. I think it is harming the earth, 'cos it drains the layer of oil under the surface, and that could be causing earthquakes. It's like we're givi...
You can't sing about the same things as you did when you were 20; it would be ridiculous to sing about, I don't know, being in the quad. You can't really write about mortgage payments or stuff like that... but you can talk about 'let's make the world...
If I were related to Monet, I don't know if I would be comfortable becoming an artist because it's too much, the comparison. If I wrote a book and put it out, the comparison to my great-grandfather, the comparison would be hilarious. Every critic, it...
I grew up loving actresses or actors who were very classy but who seemed a little bit mysterious because you couldn't grasp what they're really thinking. I mean, Grace Kelly always looked impossibly glamorous, yet you could always see there was somet...
It's maybe hard to believe, but as a kid I really had a lot of self-doubts. My father was very ill - he was an alcoholic - so there were a lot of things that built up for me. And because I was going to a Catholic school in a small German town, a lot ...
Not too many years ago, both parties acknowledged that our entitlement commitments were a sword hanging over our heads. But when President George W. Bush tried to begin discussions on Social Security reform, Democrats ridiculed and demonized him and ...
Americans were outraged and horrified by this president's reckless spending and his endless assaults on the Constitution, but no issue drove them to rise up and fight back like Obamacare - both the abominable legislative monstrosity itself and the ty...
Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
The man had a smooth voice, like velvet. “I’m Detective Inspector Me. Unusual name, I know. My family were incredibly narcissistic. I’m lucky I escaped with any degree of humility at all, to be honest, but then I’ve always managed to exceed e...
Don't start writing your novel until you know your characters very, very well. What they'd do if they saw somebody shoplifting. What they were like at school. What shoes they wear. Spend days - weeks, months - being them until they thicken up and sta...
My parents were both writers - they would type their manuscripts sitting side by side on the veranda of our house near Watford - so I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be a bluegrass singer, an architect, a landscape gardener, or to do so...
Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004. On February 5, we were feeling pretty confident, even from observing the first few hours of usage. Students used it like crazy. They'd sign up then spend the next 3-4 hours on it. Then we'd go to lecture hall...
I grew up in a house where there was lots of teasing and language play and laughter; it was very important. When I was a teenager, you wouldn't go to a bar and find lots of televisions everywhere. People were talking. Talk was the mental fire you wou...
If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where y...
You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture. That's what happened with your girlfriend, Paloma- she stooped to pick up her purse and your heart flew out of you.
My tears were wiped away, my heart was strong, I saw the way of healing…I said, “God help me now to preach the Word to all the dying around, and tell them how ‘tis Satan still defiles, and Jesus still delivers, for He is just the same today.
I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty mode...
The culture of women in the church today is crippled by some very pervasive lies. "To be spiritual is to be busy. To be spiritual is to be disciplined. To be spiritual is to be dutiful." No, to be spiritual is to be in Romance with God. The desire to...
