I used to bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, Leon Spinks, Sugar Ray Leonard. I used to bodyguard a lot of diamond merchants; I would travel with a suitcase full of diamonds and take them from point A to point B. My reputation grew because I was a professional. I did my job, and I was courteous – a no-nonsense guy.
I did not want to be the gay artist, and I talked to my manager all the time, like, I don’t want to lead with that. I didn’t want people to look at me like that’s all I am.
Sometimes over things that I did, movies that didn’t turn out very well – you go, ‘Why did you do that?’ But in the end, I can’t regret them because I met amazing people. There was always something that was worth it.
I did have an imaginary girlfriend.
Alexander Hamilton, of New York, a signer of the Constitution, was a member of the ratifying convention in his state and did more than any other member to wring the approval of the new instrument from delegates practically instructed by their constituents to vote against it.
The soldiers did go away and their towns were torn down; and in the Moon of Falling Leaves (November), they made a treaty with Red Cloud that said our country would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow.
I did about 50 pull-ups and 1,000 crunches a day. Crazy.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it.
I tell my brethren in Palestine: be patient and continue your blessed struggle. We did not forget you. We are still healing another wound in the Muslim nation, which is the occupation of our land by the Americans. Your battle and ours are one and the same.
The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people’s hearts… his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.
To be sure Plato did not favor ‘affirmative action’ to fill political and military offices in his own society; nor did he enroll women in his school.
We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn.
Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.
I grew up below the poverty line; I didn’t have as much as other people did. I think it made me stronger as a person, it built my character. Now I have a 4.0 grade point average and I want to go to college, and just become a better person.
It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 – except Goldwater in ’64 – the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted.
We did it together. Not one individual carried this team.
Did you know you’re supposed to soap and scrub for as long as it takes to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice?
When I was a teenager, I did a lot of pull-ups and push-ups. Every night before bed, I’d do 150 – in sets of 30 or so. Looking back on it now, I’m not totally sure that’s the best way to improve as a climber. But it did make me a lot better at doing pull-ups and push-ups.
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.
I did a guest thing on ‘My Name Is Earl,’ and there is something about being involved in a TV show that’s in the midst of its popularity that frees up the creative process.
Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.
All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I.
I did not think this doll could ever be this huge.
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
God did not want me to be a blind beggar on the street, alone and bitter. He gave me music, first to be my companion and then to be my salvation.
When I hear a guy lost a battle to cancer, that really did bother me, that that’s a term. It implies that he failed and that somebody else that defeated cancer is heroic and courageous.
My sights have always been on acting, on the creative process, never the lifestyle. Growing up in Northern Ireland when I did, everything was against you if you wanted to do something like that. But I was determined.
The marginalized did not create identity politics: their identities have been forced on them by dominant groups, and politics is the most effective method of revolt.
What about the hero of The House on the Strand? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don’t really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don’t you?
When I was in fifth grade – so, about 11 – my folks moved us to Denmark. And so not only did I have all new friends and all new surroundings, I didn’t even understand what they were talking about, which was very difficult and kind of started me, I think, on my path to animation.
Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
Land degradation did not start with chemical agriculture. But chemical agriculture offered new tools for annihilation.
My dad used to say, ‘You wouldn’t worry so much about what people thought about you if you knew how seldom they did.
I grew up as the only child, and we did not have a large family. So for me and my mother, our friends tend to become our family.
The only time I waste is time I spend doing something that, in my gut, I know I shouldn’t. If I choose to spend time playing video games or sleeping in, then it’s time well spent, because I chose to do it. I did it for a reason – to relax, to decompress or to feel good, and that was what I wanted to do.
I think I did every drug known to mankind, smoked crack, boozed, dropped acid, you name it.
Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.
Every time something bad happens to me, I don’t ask the question, ‘Why did it happen to me?’ The question I ask is, ‘Why did it happen for me?’
My first book was called, ‘Mountain, Get Out of My Way,’ where I did an autobiographical sketch, if you will, looking back at myself and looking back at things in my life, and juxtaposing them against things that are happening in other people’s lives and trying to be motivational.
When I was 12, we began hosting exchange students from Norway, Sweden, Japan and Spain. I soon realized there was a whole world out there. I was determined to spend my sophomore year in high school abroad. My school taught only Spanish, but I wanted to go to France, and I did.
Being in a successful marriage is no different than being cast in a successful movie. It’s all about who you pick; in that first moment, did you pick the right person? I think you need to pick somebody who’s more interested in being married than in getting married.
No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. So what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Moses had one, and he did all right.
Whatever I was doing, even when I was at school, I never repressed anything that I felt. I wasn’t flamboyant; I was actually quite reticent most of the time. But if I felt I had to do something, I did it.
I think that the idea that I’m writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There’s even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
I didn’t lose weight for my career or a relationship – I did it to be happy and, as Oprah says, to live my best life.
When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‘Did you sleep good?’ I said ‘No, I made a few mistakes.’
We don’t even know what our desire is. We ask other people to tell us our desires. We would like our desires to come from our deepest selves, our personal depths – but if it did, it would not be desire. Desire is always for something we feel we lack.
I love eating chocolate cake and ice cream after a show. I almost justify it in my mind as, ‘You were a good boy onstage and you did your show, so now you can have some cake and ice cream.’
I did my schooling at Holy Angels, where they had stringent rules. I coloured my hair blond and red and was pulled up by the principal.
Having a child makes you realize the importance of life – narcissism goes out the window. Heaven on earth is looking at my little boy. The minute he was born, I knew if I never did anything other than being a mom, I’d be fine.
Time will tell us what we did and didn’t do.
I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn’t until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don’t have a problem going to sleep at night.
