My mum and dad had worked incredibly hard to afford me an education.
Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
The whole force of the respectable circles to which I belonged, that respectable circle which knew as I did not the value of security won, the slender chance of replacing it if lost or abandoned, was against me.
The struggle of my life created empathy - I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me.
The thing that surprised me the most is just how much money women that weren't rich were paying for their hair. When you're in a beauty parlor in Harlem next to abandoned buildings and somebody's paying five grand for a weave, that's a bit much.
To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.
ABBA was a direct influence on me.
My favourite TV show is... 'Downton Abbey.' The characters are wonderful, and the style is created so beautifully on screen. Everything from the table settings to the linen seem perfect to me. While I'm watching it, I'm in a totally different world.
The first time I went to Abbey Road and put those headphones on, I discovered I had two voices. I no longer had to shout in the studio, but I can't knock the Cavern or the other clubs because they gave me my strong voice.
I heard the Abbey Lincoln song 'The World is Falling Down,' and it just resonated with me so deeply.
I would love to be in 'Downton Abbey.' That's the thing I thing many people would have a good laugh with me saying anything like that. I feel like that's the next phase of my career. To reprove to everyone that I can do things besides the crazy characters.
My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school. This teacher took an interest in me. In fact, he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish.
I work for ABC. If the thing that ABC is paying me for is storytelling - not to make sure that a costume is exactly right or all those other things - then it is up to me to find the most creative space possible so that that function of my job can happen.
There is no way, if I was running ABC, I would have kept me on the air.
When I was about 19, I shot a tape of me doing magic just to people on the streets, and I would edit together all the reactions and I kept pushing this idea, and then ABC came on board and made my first show.
I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the wrong light to the entire world because they will say that I could have prevented it.
The desire to abdicate, to give up - for me, that's primal.
My videogame mind died after they stopped making wonderful escape worlds - every game just turned into me training to be in the army. But I used to love the Oddworld and 'Abe's Exoddus' and 'Abe's Oddysee' for Playstation.
I joined the 'Times' in 1972, and I came with the mark of Cain on me because I was clearly against the war. But my editor, Abe Rosenthal, he hired me because he liked stories. He used to come to the Washington bureau and almost literally pat me on the head and say, 'How is my little Commie today? What do you have for me?'
Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted, strange or alien? It's odd because there's a little part of me that wants to write about exotic, strange bizarre subjects. Instead, I've rather reluctantly realised that what I write about is families.
