'Singin' in the Rain' and childbirth are two of the hardest things I ever had to do in my life.
In the 1880s, women were decades away from earning the right to vote. Few owned property - if they were even permitted to do so. In addition to childcare obligations, many toiled in work that was either underpaid or not paid at all. Essentially, the gears of progress for women were moving slowly in just about every arena of life.
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
When you're Shredder for Halloween as a kid, and now you get to play him, it's like a childhood dream come to life.
I come from the deep countryside. My family was in farming. I was not really exposed to business. Coming from that environment, I just wanted in my life to go overseas - that was a childhood dream because I wanted diversity, contacts, cultural meetings with others.
I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.
My childhood dream was to study mechanical engineering. After reading 'The Mysterious Island' - which I read 25 times as a boy - I thought that was the best thing a person could do. The engineer in the book knows mechanics and physics, and he creates a whole way of life on the island out of nothing. I wanted to be like that.
At 35, I'm definitely starting to feel more like a grown-up than I ever have. There's nothing in my life that is childish or whimsical. Having fun is fantastic and I never want to lose a sense of that - and also, I think, you have to have that to put into your work or else it's going to feel stiff.
The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.
I usually feel like the role comes to you to sort of illuminate some piece of where you are in your life. I feel like I myself am a single woman and I'm childless - by choice - at this point, and I don't know what will happen.
I have a romantic conception of the writer's life, and the sort of writer's life that I admire is probably a childless life, possibly a marriageless life, certainly a travelling life - I'm in awe of how much D.H. Lawrence managed to get around. But that's never been something I'm capable of doing.
I am politically pro-choice, but personally pro-life. I have my faith but refuse to force it on the world at large - especially this world, so brutal and unjust. I cannot make these wrenching personal life and death decisions for others - nor do I believe they should be made by a church run by childless men.
The longest, most solid and complex relationship in my life is with my mother. It started before I was born, and now, when I am 71 and living in California and she is 92 and living in Chile, we are still in touch daily.
I have, like, a playlist with all my favourite songs on it. Sadie's Playlist is the soundtrack of my life. 'Wonderwall' by Oasis, 'Under The Bridge' by Red Hot Chili Peppers, TLC, 'Waterfalls' - I love the '90s.
Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.
It's odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, 'I've been reading you all my life.' It makes you feel a slight chill.
I've been trying to learn how to not be so conflicted about things like my own anger. I've always had a place in my music for my anger as a way of compensating for not having a mechanism to express it in my everyday life. So I've been trying to be more true to myself, and that helps me to chill out a little bit. But politically, uh-uh. No.
I'm a really nice guy when you meet me, and that surprises a lot of people. I'm not that eccentric in real life - and certainly not that disrespectful. In my own time, I like to just chill out with friends and not get in people's faces.
I spent a lot of my teenage years experimenting with who I was as a person and not really getting it right. And then, I think, I realized that I just had to chill out in life.
I've watched a lot of guys through the years, and they hold their breath until they finally win The Big One, thinking then they can exhale and chill out. You have to breathe through life, man. Have fun.
