I grew up in a small hotel with many rooms, so when I became aware of 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,' I inspected all the wardrobes, sure one had to be a portal to another world. I was also a true believer in faeries, and perhaps still am.
The invention of the micro-loan was a big surprise to me. Who would have guessed loans of less than $20 made to poor people in undeveloped countries could create thriving local economies? And, even more surprisingly, that they more reliably pay off t...
I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.
It's not that I bounce ideas off of my children as much as it is that having children has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. They have mined my soul. They've made me a better person and therefore a more empathetic writer.
...avoid – like the measles – phony laughter. No, really. If you don’t find it to be funny, don't laugh. More evil and injustice has gotten a foothold in this world because of polite, counterfeit laughter – a desire to not “offend”, or to...
Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why /but the editorialists forget it /te...
Why then seek to complete in a few decades what took the other nations of the world thousands of years? Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts? You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may...
Everyone seems to see bleakness and despair in my books. I don't read them that way. I see myself as writing comic books, books about ordinary people trying to live ordinary, dull, happy lives while the world is falling to pieces around them.
The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.
I think I'm in the same mood as ever, but in some ways more mature. I guess you could say that, at 65, when you've seen the world shape up as I have, there are only two things you can do: laugh or kill yourself.
I grew up in a town with no movie theater. TV was my only link to the outside world. Film wasn't such a big deal to me. It was TV. So much so, that when I meet TV stars now... Not my co-workers, but real TV stars, I get nervous. I freak out around th...
My father's encouragement is what has brought me this far, because when I grew up I wanted to be like him, and I knew I had that ability to become an athlete. Being an Olympian is one of the greatest things, and being an Olympic gold medallist is one...
It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.
I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to. Society has got me so fucking trained. I rubbed my eyes and groaned and felt ut...
If bloggers are to improve our public discourse - helping busy and usually uninformed people make sense of the world - it is necessary to use some sort of standard with which to judge their reliability. Perhaps the answer (strictly advisory) is a bod...
And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak, Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties My hair...now could I but unloose my soul! We are sepulchred alive in this close world, And want more room.
On some level, now, we are joining the larger world and realizing that we are connected with people in these very scary ways, sometimes. What happened recently in Spain affects us here and brings questions up. It is too bad that people have to be sha...
People saw me as being heroic, but I was no more heroic than I was with other injuries I had, like the lacerated kidney I suffered during the 1990 World Series. It's just that people haven't known anyone with a lacerated kidney, but everyone can rela...
Open your mind. See the world in all its splendid color. Truly look at the uniqueness of the people around you and cherish the nuances. Before you make judgments of others and their lifestyles, always remember that there are a million ways to live an...
Jesus and Satan appear here as repre sentatives of two opposite principles. Satan is the representative of material consumption and of power over nature and Man. Jesus is the representative of being, and of the idea that not-having is the premise for...
People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel aro...
