What brought me to the table was Raymond Chandler and, to a lesser degree, Ross Macdonald and Dashiell Hammett. I was basically inspired to want to write like the classic private-eye writers.
I wound up adopting two dogs from Sochi. It wasn't really me who brought them home as much as it was one of my best friends, Robin Macdonald, who was out there with me.
I had a great first year and Mr. MacDonald was my biggest supporter. He gave me the encouragement I needed that first year to get my career started on a positive note.
Machiavelli taught me it was better to be feared than loved. Because if you are loved they sense you might be weak. I am a man of the people and help them but it is important to do so through strength.
I think that me as a person, and as a personality, even my name alone, 'Machine Gun Kelly' - it is very loud, and it says a lot.
I love looking at pictures of me in 2012-2017, because every single one of those Machine Gun Kellys looks different.
As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that's what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbringing was militaristic.
I remember somebody asking me in an interview years ago if I would be interested in playing Jason Bourne. I laughed: I didn't think anybody would want to see me run around with a machine gun. It always stayed in the back of my head that I had reacted like that. It bothered me.
My gun trainer on the first 'G.I. Joe' gave me about a week of commando training, so I got to shoot every single machine gun and hand gun there was.
For me, personally, skiing holds everything. I used to race cars, but skiing is a step beyond that. It removes the machinery and puts you one step closer to the elements. And it's a complete physical expression of freedom.
You know how macho boys get when they're all together? Well, the set of 'Desperado' was like that. They were all trying to put me down, saying, 'Bring on the stuntwoman, Salma can't do that.' But I did everything.
It blows me away the number of truck drivers or macho guys that will call, and then I start peeling back the layers, and I find out they've been listening to me for 10 or 15 years, and they know every lyric to every sappy song.
I want to be the best at what I do, and that's just me. That's what comes with Mack.
I was doing about five movies a year for many years. I was just so tired. I walked around feeling like a Mack truck hit me.
O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!
It's funny: I don't get to play characters where I wear what I want to wear. With 'Mad Men,' if Janie Bryant doesn't laugh at me, then that outfit doesn't make it to air.
The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master.
I think people sometimes have a hard time placing me because I don't fit into a box. When they ask what I do at a cocktail party, I either say I'm a Renaissance woman or I'm a high-level madam. Lately I've been more comfortable saying I'm an artist, because that can cover a lot of different things.
Madam your wife and I didn't hit it off the only time I ever saw her. I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn't me.
I had this wild imagination. I was never me. All my childhood photos, I'm in fancy dress, playing a Russian refuge or Marvelous Mad Madam Mim.
