I've worked hard throughout my entire life, but I don't think all the hard work could have produced the same results without all the genetics I was given.
There have been few things in my life which have had a more genial effect on my mind than the possession of a piece of land.
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
There's such a wealth of literature from the 18th century and 19th century, George Eliot... Jane Austen... that's all about a genteel high society, relationships, all of that stuff. There wasn't ever really, apart from Dickens, a literary evocation of working class life.
I wasn't close to my father, but I wanted to be all my life. He had a funny sense of humor, and he laughed all the time - good and loud, like I do. He was a gay Irish gentleman and very good-looking. And he wanted to be close to me, too, but we never had much time together.
'Cue for Treason,' by Geoffrey Trease, radicalized my young girl brain and made me want to be a gender-bending, sonnet-writing anarchist. It really made something roar to life inside of me.
After college, I became a geologist, mapping what lay beneath the earth's surface. I thought I had my life pretty figured out and all my boxes checked. But then, I was laid off - along with thousands of other geologists. I lost not only my job, but also my profession.
One of the defining experiences of my life came in the mid-1980s. After working for two years as a geologist in Colorado, I lost my job and my career during that long recession.
There's a theory that says that life is based on a competition and the struggle and the fight for survival, and it's interesting because when you look at the fractal character of evolution, it's totally different. It's based on cooperation among the elements in the geometry and not competition.
I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.
What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.
Now it is just this world we like the best, the Germanic world, the world of Nordic life.
I don't care what you say about me anymore! I don't care what you write about me anymore. I don't care! This is my life. I can't have anybody messing with my life. I just want to be Gerry Cooney, doing what I want to do. I want to be what I am. A fighter.
I've had a couple of times where things were so extraordinary wonderful that it changed my world. One of them was when I met Ira Gershwin and started working with him. That was a game-changer for me. It changed the entire course and direction of my life.
To put the point sharply: If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand.
The homosexual community wants me to be gay. The heterosexual community wants me to be straight. Every writer thinks, I'm the journalist who's going to make him talk. I pray for them. I pray that they get a life and stop living mine!
I really love 'America's Next Top Model.' I'm always tweeting about it, and people are like, 'You need to get a life!'
To me, racism is so played out and corny and stupid, especially in music, where you now have Nelly doing songs with Tim McGraw, on the hit single 'Over and Over.' Anyone who thinks about that just needs to get a life.
Fashion people think that the careful Nice companies are boring beyond measure. (Nice people think fashionistas look silly and should Get A Life).
I'm a wise Latina woman. Whatever, man. Thank God I'm not in politics, because the fact that you have to explain everything - I'd kill myself. I can't take all those little things they dissect. I'm like, 'Oh my God, get a life.' I don't have time for this.
