For some reason, on that sparkling afternoon last week, I actually saw the coal that was passing by and it set me to thinking how important coal was to our everyday lives when I was a little boy.
I remember I was, like, 6 years old when I found out that I was having a little brother, and I was wishing and wishing for a sister. When my mom came out and my dad, and they're like, 'It's a boy,' Spencer, my twin brother, is cheering and jumping up and down, and then I burst into tears. I was so sad. I was crying.
I think about it, and I realize there's been some version of a Batman or Spiderman or Superman franchise since I was a boy, since before I was a boy.
I had spinal surgery to correct scoliosis when I was 16 years old. The only thing that scared me about the procedure was that it would make me two inches taller. At the time, I had a crush on a boy who was about my height - and I was worried that if I were taller than him, it would never happen!
I was interested in psychic things and in spiritualism even as a boy. I'd started doing yoga by the early 1970s.
When you're the youngest and the only boy, you get spoilt but you get told you're spoilt so you don't get to enjoy it very much. I was the only man in the house because my parents divorced and my dad moved away when I was 13.
I've followed the NBA religiously since I was a kid, and now because of my boy Tony Parker, I'm a huge Spurs fan.
'The Polar Express' began with the idea of a train standing alone in the woods. I asked myself, 'What if a boy gets on that train? Where does he go?'
I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project 'Artificial Intelligence,' which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.
I used to play too with a boy who played a saxophone. We didn't play no blues, we'd play a lot of love songs - 'Stardust', 'Blue Moon', 'Out Cold Again', 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Stars Fell On Alabama', a lot of different stuff.
I like to compare the attitude and energy of an emerging start-up to that of the early hip-hop era. From working at labels like Bad Boy and Ruff Ryders, walking into the Def Jam offices, A Touch of Jazz and things like that, the vibe is that off making something out of nothing and making things work, and that's what I love about start-ups.
For a boy of ten, used to the coal bings and rust-coloured burns of Cowdenbeath, the fields and woodland of Kingswood, with its overgrown but stately avenue of copper-barked sequoias, felt like a local version of paradise.
You've got to stay focused without being boring - because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Skinny, but dull.
I'm a fan boy when it comes to Michael Buble. He's just so good at 'it'. He's got a voice of this generation, but he's like a time capsule; he's got a voice that could have fit in anywhere over the last hundred years. It's stellar.
The transition from an English father to a Punjabi stepfather demanded an adjustment that was far from easy for a 10-year-old boy who had just lost his father.
The old boy network is still very strong and very true. Just look at the stock exchange and how many men and women are there. It is still very much run by men.
People's interest in glamour and clothes and nylon stockings and all those things were, when I was a little boy, the sort of world that I listened to.
I belonged to Stratford Children's Theater when I was a boy growing up in Manchester. Even then, I was always doing character parts.
When I was 11 or 12 - a young boy in Japan - one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there's a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.
I'm interested in making films of all sizes. During this time I've made a film called 'The Boy in the Striped Pajamas', which is a modest-sized film. I was involved in 'I Am Legend' and 'Yes, Man', but 'Potter' is unique. There'll never be anything like 'Potter' again.
