Times change, things move. F1 used to have customer cars years ago. You could buy a car from March or from Ferrari and go racing.
As they say, one thing led to another, and, ultimately, the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations, which ironically began six years ago this week.
People like Arvo Part would not have been taken seriously 20 years ago.
There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.
Seven years ago, when I started free soloing long, hard routes in Yosemite – climbing without a rope, gear or a partner – I did it because it seemed like the purest, most elegant way to scale big walls. Climbing, especially soloing, felt like a grand adventure, but I never dreamed it could be a profession.
Israel being condemned by the EU, which 66 years ago watched with glee as its Jews were being mass murdered. That is pretty rich.
There’s an incomparable rush that comes from finding dinosaur bones. You know you’re the first person to lay hands on a critter that lived 80 or 90 million years ago.
In terms of writing about horses, I fell backwards into that. I was intent on getting a Ph.D., becoming a professor, and writing on history but I got sick 14 years ago when I was 19. Getting sick derailed that plan completely.
It wasn’t until a few years ago, when I was going through old Facebook pictures with a friend, and happened upon a photo of a monkey at a zoo that had been tagged as me by an old housemate, that I realized I’d normalized so much racism.
I learned that the first technology appeared in the form of stone tools, 2.6 million years ago. First entertainment comes evidence from flutes that are 35,000 years old. And evidence for first design comes 75,000 years old – beads. And you can do the same with your genes and track them back in time.
Twelve years ago, if someone attacked me, I wouldn’t let them get away with it. I’d take them on. I now perceive my job to include allowing people to vent their rage.
My biggest worry is I’m running out of time and energy. Thirty years ago I thought 10 years was a really long time.
There’s a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That’s baseball.
I’m a very recent convert to the gay scene. I went to a party a couple of years ago and met a very nice man who took me under his wing and started taking me out to clubs. It was a revelation.
Twenty years ago, I said there was going to be something that would stop the Soviet Union from taking over the world. And now we see that the Soviet Union has been stopped, through its own disintegration.
One thing I do personally started 20 years ago. I started meditating, and I know twice a day I can kind of let everything drop. It’s just about being quiet, like drawing back the day, and it allows me to have energy.
We don’t have as much prejudice as we did 40 years ago, but today it is more educated.
I turned my hand to costume design a few years ago when I created the outfits for ‘This Is the Sea,’ with Richard Harris and Samantha Morton. It’s a very different discipline to being a fashion designer, though – you have to rein in your own vision and work to a tight brief.
On the screen were some flashback shots of Daniel, Emma and Rupert from ten years ago. They were 12. I have also recently returned from New York, and while I was there, I saw Daniel singing and dancing (brilliantly) on Broadway. A lifetime seems to have passed in minutes.
25, 30 years ago, that meant something, they were making some money. And they were doing all sorts of comedy, screaming at the audience, basically crowd control. And then there was the whole urban comedy scene.
I don’t have a real home. When I got ‘Avatar,’ I sold everything that I owned because I knew it was going to be a long journey. I’ve got two bags, and that was four years ago, and I’ve been working ever since, and I’ve still only got two bags – a bag of books and a bag of clothes. That’s about it.
I’ve never been invited to do an exhibition or do a talk in England, except once, about 10 years ago. I’ve given talks all across Canada, many in the United States, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan – but not England.
I’m very conscious about putting good food into my body. Years ago, I went to see an amazing healer called Allah, who could read your body. She told me that I can’t absorb vitamins very well, and I have to eat the right things to get my vitamins. I’ve always remembered that.
I started buying films a couple of years ago. The first film-maker I began to obsessively collect was Andy Milligan. He was a New York frustrated artist.
I do the same exercises I did 50 years ago and they still work. I eat the same food I ate 50 years ago and it still works.
Six years ago, I completed the premier episode of Hawaii Five-O, and Jack Lord and I immediately realized that we had a good series, that this was a success such as we’d never hoped for!
A few years ago in Chicago, I rented an office, and I went there every day. For the most part I do work at home in an ugly room.
There is a greater fatigue concerning the African problem today than five or 10 years ago. The situation now in Africa is worse today than it was 10 years ago.
The rules that enabled me to compete first went into effect in 2003. They are known as the Stockholm consensus with the IOC, but I think even 10 years ago the world perhaps wasn’t ready for an athlete like myself – and perhaps it is not ready now.
I’m not so proud to think that anything is unworthy, and I don’t think I was that way 10 years ago.
Imagination! Imagination! I put it first years ago, when I was asked what qualities I thought necessary for success on the stage.
Teamwork was more accepted 40 years ago.
Homo sapiens, you and me, we are basically the same as people 10,000 years ago. The next revolution will change that.
Most jobs today are still structured the same way they were 50 years ago, when most families had someone who could stay at home.
It doesn’t matter if that felony happened three weeks ago or thirty-five years ago – for the rest of your life, you’ve got to check that box, knowing full well the odds are sky-high your application is going straight to the trash.
After 9/11 and the impending actors’ strike of a few years ago, roles dried up for everyone.
When you snatch little pieces of other people’s lives and try to palm them off as your own, that’s more disgusting than anything. Robin Williams is a huge thief. Denis Leary is a huge thief. His whole stand-up career is based on Bill Hicks, a brilliant guy who died years ago.
The best time to buy a home is always five years ago.
Two years ago, if anyone had told me I’d be doing half the stuff I’m doing, I wouldn’t have believed it.
If you look through the history of wearables, I was named the father of wearable computing, or the world’s first cyborg. But the definition of wearable computing can be kind of fuzzy itself. Thousands of years ago, in China, people would wear an abacus around their neck – that, in one sense, was a wearable computer.
There’s always a time in a relationship when you can pull back. Three years ago when I realized I was falling for a guy with a complicated medical history, I decided not to exit. Believe me, I made the right decision.
If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.
My agent said to me five years ago, ‘Hugh, I can see one day you… if I had to plan a goal for you, it’s for you to have the kind of career that Sinatra had.’
A few years ago, I thought, I’ll never make it. I started to go to the doctor to help me lose weight.
When streaming came out years ago I loved it. I loved having an audience, I loved chatting away and looking at a live chat and now on Twitch you can actually get a career at it.
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation – not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.
Libertarians are essentially what the Republicans were 30 years ago. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. They’d all fit more under the Libertarian label than the modern day Republican label.
My father, who died a few years ago, was a good, simple, very honest man. His faith and affection for his family was just unassailable, without question.
‘Red Knot’ is a film that I shot in Antarctica almost three years ago on a boat. It was a film that was improvised and it had very interesting circumstances while making the film, obviously. We were on a small boat bobbing around in Antarctica. It was a really remarkable experience.
Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being regarded ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation.
A couple of years ago I ran in the LA Marathon.
Most men, no matter how well or badly dressed, carry overstuffed, beat up wallets that should have been replaced years ago. Why is that? Every time I see a guy take out a wallet anywhere, it looks like a piece of old melted chocolate cake-with strings.
