The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.
Bruce Lee took his craft very seriously, just as my dad took his stuff very seriously. I just loved Lee’s attitude.
I never took a music lesson in my life, it just came naturally.
I went to all the Love-Ins. I took my kids. I enjoyed myself.
My old songs used to take place in Gothenburg; then, when I lived in Melbourne, the songs just naturally took place more in Melbourne.
I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar.
I took a big risk to come to Hull, I have to be honest. But I loved it there, I really did. Great club and great people.
Constantine ‘Costa’ Gratsos had made his fortune as a lifelong associate of shipping icon Aristotle Onassis. He took a liking to me, became my first mentor, and showed me how to swim in the deep, dangerous waters of business.
The successful man is the one who had the chance and took it.
I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk.
‘Hound Dog’ took like twelve minutes. That’s not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy. ‘Kansas City’ was maybe eight minutes, if that. Writing the early blues was spontaneous. You can hear the energy in the work.
People talk about retiring. I never said that r-word. People though I went away after the Olympic Games. I took time off to do something I’ve always wanted to be – a mother.
It took me years to actually get comfortable on the stage. I prefer the intimacy of screen; it comes easier to me. In theater, you have to be louder and bigger – that was harder for many years in my teens. But now I’ve conquered that. I eat up the stage. I love it.
The devil took advantage of Christ’s hunger to tempt him to limit his concern to the relief of human need. These are vital concerns, but they cannot be the sole concern of the Church. We need daily bread; we need, too, a reason for living, a sense of purpose, a vision.
Once I even took the train to Utrecht, forty miles from Amsterdam, with my yellow star, this star which I still have. Why did I go? I just wanted to visit some friends. I was a little bit crazy, a little bit insane.
With ‘The Forty Rules of Love,’ I wanted to write a love story. But I wanted a love story with a spiritual dimension. For me, that took me to Rumi. And from Rumi, I went to Shams of Tabriz. That’s how the story took shape.
I did a bit of modeling before I took up acting, and I was up for this big campaign – I can’t remember which designer – and all these execs were looking at my portfolio. Then one said: ‘We’d like to use you, but can you come back next year when you’ve lost this.’ And he tapped the underside of his chin.
I found golf late in life, in 1990. I took some lessons and struggled. Then one day, I hit a drive that was so crisp and clean, with no vibration. There’s no feeling like it. I was hooked.
People took part in the referendum because they were tired of the war. They are afraid of talking about it out loud, but they have shown exactly where they stand: Yes, we want peace, and we want to be a part of Russia.
Kristina, my wife, and I thought about this one day when the kids were, of course, watching television. And we took a big blanket and put it in the backyard and said, ‘Let’s go out on our back and look at the sky and call it sky television.’ We saw all kinds of things.
I’m a very positive person, but this whole concept of having to always be nice, always smiling, always happy, that’s not real. It was like I was wearing a mask. I was becoming this perfectly chiselled sculpture, and that was bad. That took a long time to understand.
I’ve always lived in New York; I never moved to L.A. I was developing and producing and writing a pilot for a year. That took me out of everything for over a year. When that sadly didn’t go forward, I shot ‘Black Mirror’ right after that.
And they asked me to take a polygraph as to the allegations and reports I’d made. I volunteered and I took the polygraph and passed it without a glitch.
I recently had a few days off while shooting a movie in Budapest, so I took a cab from the set to the airport, looked at the departure board, and decided where I wanted to go right then and there. I spent four days in Rome and didn’t tell anyone I was going.
I used to say, ‘Mad’ takes on both sides.’ We even used to rake the hippies over the coals. They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took aspects of their culture and had fun with it. ‘Mad’ was wide open.
It took me six years to be comfortable modeling a swimsuit.
Even President Bush has cited the need to outlaw the practice of corporations making loans to their officers. Strangely enough, when the President was a corporate officer, he took out several loans from the company.
I took acting classes, and I’m always trying to improve myself. Everyone can improve, and the more you work in the industry, the better you are going to feel about it.
I just didn’t want to leave the Cowboys when they were down. I at least wanted them to get into a respectable position before anyone else took over.
I once took a workshop with Jim Shepard, and he has this term, ‘rate-of-revelation,’ that has come to mean a lot to me: ‘the pace at which we’re learning crucial emotional information about the stories’ central figures.’ An ever-increasing rate-of-revelation is good; a stagnant r-of-r is not.
At 17, I already had responsibility because I took care of my family, but in the football I was young; I wasn’t experienced or the captain – I was just in the team.
I am happy with being a tennis player and the choice I took when I was 12. But clearly, if I wouldn’t have been a tennis player, I would have loved to be a soccer player. But again, I am happy with the choice I made.
Sometimes you surf well and still don’t win. It happens to everyone. You learn that one big score doesn’t mean much if you don’t have a backup. I guess every rookie learns that as time goes by. I took some big lessons from my losses.
I tried to bake a cake for my mother’s birthday – it took me four hours. It was terrible, and I cried for three days.
It’s great to watch people come up and help mold their careers. I really took it literal when Kanye said, ‘Listen to the kids, bruh.’ That really means something.
My grandmother has always been my biggest fan, and she was my whole life. The only thing that kept me living after her death is my commitment to training. I took my pain out on the track.
I have experienced a murderer among my friends. Many, many years ago. At close range I have seen the impact of it. I knew the victim, I went to the funeral, I have been to the house, to the specific room where the killing took place, and I was stunned by it. It’s such a blow.
I wanted to be a snowplow driver when I was a kid. Growing up in the Rocky Mountains, that’s the most glorious job you can imagine. But then my mother took me to a lecture about the solar system when I was 8, and I got hooked.
I took upon myself to enact the part of a poor, unfortunate crazy girl, and felt it my duty not to shirk any of the disagreeable results that should follow.
The only reason I took up small roles in big banner films was in the hope to get the attention of other directors.
It took me a while to learn the true meaning of patience and surrender, but I have finally accepted that healing doesn’t happen on our schedule. It doesn’t have a clock or a calendar.
By climbing a steeper road, the value and appreciation Delaware State students took and continue to take from their education and their experiences is just as great, if not greater, than students attending ivy league schools.
He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints.
It took me a long time to find out that I was born to be an actor. It was the last thing on my list, although my list was very small. I didn’t know what to do. But kids weren’t supposed to know what to do back then; we were all cute and we’d find out what we’d do later in life.
It took me years to eat a lot of shellfish. I was probably 20 years old before I had even seen a shrimp cocktail. I like oysters, but fried.
It took me 11 years to struggle through one dumb book, and every day you just want to give up. But you don’t find out you’re an artist because you do something really well.
I tried to work with a record label; I tried to work with a booking agency, variety shows. I went to Vegas. I just tried everything I could think of, and nothing took. No one thought there was a place for my style and my music; it was just too different.
