I’ve always loved New York; I’ve been visiting New York since 1996. People don’t look at you like, ‘What are you doing? What are you wearing?’ There is also that thing that when people know that you have worked hard to get something, people have that respect for that here. You worked hard – good for you.
Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.
I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter. I thought that this electric typewriter was about the most fascinating toy in the world – I liked the little bell and the sounds and the feel of the keys and especially the erase key.
There is a common British delusion that we ‘understand’ America. We don’t. Watching ‘Friends’ listening to Bruce Springsteen, eating at McDonald’s and visiting Disneyland does not do it.
I just feel like this guy who’s visiting the music business over the weekend. Every time I write a song, I feel like it’s never going to happen again.
The way a small child might dream of visiting Disneyland, I dreamed of writing books. Never did I think my poems would become that.
Even if you go to Australia today, it’s very much like visiting a state you haven’t been to.
One of my favorite activities as a priesthood leader is visiting members of the Church in their homes. I especially enjoy calling upon and talking with members who commonly are described as ‘less active.’
I rented a house in Favignana, off the coast of Sicily, in the mid or late ’90s. There was a revolving door of visiting friends and family – we played games, painted our faces, went swimming naked, cooked big meals, rode around on motorini, and had great cappuccinos.
I think I know now that you can’t do this sort of climbing and have a domestic side. You’re not a practicing father if you’re not there. You’re maybe a visiting father.
It’s not as if I’ve ever been to prison or been close to going to prison. The closest I’ve got is knowing people who have been in jail – after all, I was a member of Parliament – and visiting them there during their sentence.
I did a lot of acting when I was a child. I was very shy – the kind of kid who ran into a corner and cried on parents’ visiting day.
My mother told me, ‘Son, nobody else but God knows.’ And that’s what I’m about – reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That’s what I do.
I love nothing better than immersing myself in different street cultures; exploring all those neighbourhoods in Tokyo was quite amazing, or visiting Morocco to see an Inditex factory.
