People say, 'Weren't you deprived of your childhood?' No way. I would not take anything

back at all. Everything about it was great. I got to go places, meet people, play baseball against older kids and better competition. I had a great time.
Bryce Harper

I love writing both fiction and memoir. Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way.
Lisa Scottoline

In Hollywood there's a great openness, almost a voracious appetite for new people. In England there's a great suspicion of the new. In cultural terms, that can be a good thing, but when you're trying to break into the film industry, it's definitely a bad thing.
Christopher Nolan

I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs.
Jake Owen

Now it is evident that a little insight into the customs of every people is necessary to insure a kindly communication; this, joined with patience and kindness, will seldom fail with the natives of the interior.
Charles Sturt

I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.
Steve Martin

I spend so much time in Los Angeles and normally stay at a corporate apartment when shooting 'Top Chef: Just Desserts,' but when I have the chance to stay somewhere more luxurious, I love The Montage in Beverly Hills.
Gail Simmons

I kind of peak at how far I can push my body, and then I run out of determination for the habit and start easing off. It's really just a lack of focus and discipline.
Sean Astin

The idea that vaccines are a primary cause of autism is not as crackpot as some might wish. Autism's 60-fold rise in 30 years matches a tripling of the U.S. vaccine schedule.
Jenny McCarthy

Gemeoss

Urban Outfitters - I love it. It's almost like Forever 21, but for, like, the

24- to 25-year-old girl, getting a little bit older. Keke Palmer I'm the kind of person that believes that I would like to be evaluated by my entire career and my entire life, not two words that I would misspeak and then later apologize for. Kirk Cameron I often feel a discomfort, a kind of embarrassment, when I explain elementary-particle physics to laypeople. It all seems so arbitrary - the ridiculous collection of fundamental particles, the lack of pattern to their masses. Leonard Susskind Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time. Joshua Roman Space X's Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars with modules where earthlings can live. My teleporting technology is the number one way those individuals will get new information, new treatments of diseases that will occur on the planet, and new food sources. Craig Venter Brain cells are normally not sensitive to light. So by introdu...

In the next couple of years, part of every film's process is going to be

to adjust the images. And it'll be to change the color of an actor's tie or change the little smirky thing he's doing with his mouth. Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little bit. Robert Zemeckis There's a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It's the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college. Jill Scott I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We're supposed to be complete and whole, and you can't be whole if you're trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please. Jane Fonda For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American. Nora Roberts Well, you know I have an office, my film offices. So I...

For years I've been seeing my young brothers wearing Scarface T-shirts, John Gotti T-shirts, Rick

James T-shirts. We don't have any icons or idols to look up to, just rappers and professional athletes. Lamar Odom As I was writing, I realised I wasn't sufficiently extrovert to gather enough interesting souls with tall tales around me. I was no Louis Theroux. But neither was I interested in exploring my inner life in public, in the manner of a Jonathan Raban. Clive Sinclair I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering. John le Carre I want to be a chef, but I'm only a fat girl chef; like, I only like to make fat comfort food. I'm not, like, a healthy chef person. Khloe Kardashian At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that. Bono What matters is being a particular kind of person. At the most basic level, it matters that you are the kin...

First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant

about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn't mean they're wrong. Steven Van Zandt The Term Paper Artist' represents two models of writing, one of the little boy bouncing his ball, generating stories for the sheer pleasure of it, and the besieged adult, writing to make a living, having to contend with a very competitive, very unreliable world in which public image counts. David Leavitt If you're going through friendship issues, I would say, first of all take a step back. How important is the friendship to you? Sometimes, if someone's not being a good friend to you and isn't treating you the way you should be treated, then you kind of have to move on sometimes. Victoria Justice Things are going very smoothly. As expected, there are some minor glitches, and the eight minutes that it took us to get to orbit, we trained months and m...

In the morning, I have certain aspirations. One of my goals is to avoid looking

at the computer or checking e-mail for at least an hour after I wake up. I also try to avoid alarm clocks as much as possible, because it's just nice to wake up without one. Matt Mullenweg At Sequoia, upwards of a hundred entrepreneurs a week present, and if we're lucky, maybe a dozen of them are focusing on the enterprise. Jim Goetz I've never seen a world where only men were responsible for the violence, and the women were innocent. They go together. Men and women are a violent mixture. Claire Denis I don't feel a real need to specify the meaning of something. When I was little and I was introduced to Led Zeppelin, I didn't know what a zeppelin was or who Zeppelin was or what the machine was. The real meaning is whatever feelings and memories you attach to the music. Kyp Malone St. Louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet - as broad as Philadelphia, but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier atmosphere, over the dull-brown of w...

It's one thing to say you're for the war; it's another thing to send your

kid to war - your daughter or your son. Tim O'Brien When you're still in the broadcast business, you're still trying to reach tens of millions. You're trying to still aim for a broader audience, and I think that's a more difficult task to spread yourself across that audience, connect with them, as opposed to a very, very small, pinpointed audience. Difficult to do. Warren Littlefield I did this film with Russell Crowe called 'The Water Diviner,' which took place just after WWI. It was fascinating because the weapons between WWI and WII were very different. I had to learn how to ride horses in a battle setting. It was important that we rode a certain way. Jai Courtney My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener. Curtis Mayfield I realized that if I don't like something, I can change it. If I don't feel comfortabl...

If Sunday is the Lord's day, then Saturday belongs to the Devil. It is the

only night of the week when he gives out Free passes to the Late show at the Too Much Fun Club. Hunter S. Thompson Pantera revolutionized the sound and the approach to heavy metal. It's been regurgitated. Once you up the production on a product and not just the playing but the actual production, then it's going to up the ante. Phil Anselmo I've been truly blessed. I've been a fly on the wall of history. I've been just so many lucky places just by chance and serendipity, and obviously a huge portion of that serendipity had to do with my relationship with the real president, Ronald Reagan. Arthur Laffer Of all the seasons, winter is the most conducive to the great art of dormancy. This art requires an appreciation of semi-consciousness: the beautiful and necessary prelude to sleep - a special pleasure in itself that is all too often neglected, under-valued or looked down upon. Michael Leunig I personally am very active with the women's prison associati...

I'm the kind of person who likes to hang out and observe what's going on

in the streets, or in certain places. I used to do that a lot. But having to become an international superstar, I can't do that comfortably! But it's all positive, you know. Jimmy Cliff Liberty isn't liberalism, arbitrariness, but it's connected; it's conditioned by the great values of love and solidarity and in general by the good. Pope Benedict XVI I came to all the realizations about sustainability and biodiversity because I fell in love with the way food tastes. That was it. And because I was looking for that taste I feel at the doorsteps of the organic, local, sustainable farmers, dairy people and fisherman. Alice Waters The only biography I read was about Al Bell, of Stax Records. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Al Bell. Juicy J I didn't go to law school to become a lawyer, per se - let's just say I was leaning in to some strong suggestions from my parents - but my nebulous goals of someday becoming a writer were just that, nebulous....

If our inconceivably ancient universe even had any beginning, the conditions determining that beginning must

even now be engraved in the atomic weights. Theodore William Richards I can watch an episode of Jerry Seinfeld, and by the end, I'm just walking around my house, you know, talking like Jerry Seinfeld. 'What is that? What are you doing? Who is it? What's going' - you know, I just had that thing, when I grew up, I'd just start talking like people. You know, I always had that. Jimmy Fallon One of my early childhood memories was my grandmother always having a bowl of Nestle chocolate bars at her house. My sister and I would argue over who could eat the chocolate bars. Looking back, I don't know why we just didn't share. We could have split them. Carla Hall This is what I believe about performing: There is no reason to be on stage - there is no reason to be there - if you're not going to put all your baggage somewhere else and just be honest. Whatever you're doing - screw it up, do great - just be there, and be honest. That's the most importa...

The developing countries must be able to take a more active part in trade negotiations,

through technical assistance and support from the developed countries. Anna Lindh There is nothing I can do about this stuff and I am pretty well ok with the fact that I think Sundance is not going to be stopped by it, because he Festival is itself now, and doesn't need me out there to talk about it like I did years ago. Robert Redford As a teenager, I didn't want to be me; I wanted to be many different people. Maybe I realized that they all lived inside me and that if I managed to connect with them, they would become aspects of me. Marion Cotillard If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: 'fair,' leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life. Charles Krauthammer I'm not sure I have a natural gift. I think it's just that some people have an easier time expressing their emotions, maybe because of the way they've been raised, and I've always bee...