In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry.
For me, geopolitical issues are becoming more important, because how can you understand economy if you don't understand geopolitics? People think economists just deal with spreadsheets and charts. That's a narrow-minded caricature.
The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot and George Washington - wasn't nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington.
In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get - The Future!
Well, let me tell you, any conservative that's unhappy with George Bush warms my heart, in any way that they can wake up and smell the coffee would be really great.
When people say that George Harrison made me famous, that is true in a way.
I was playing with George Harrison one time, and George loves takes. This song was up to Take 160. I said, 'George, do you want me to play the same thing or 160 different things?' It drove me crazy because, in general, I'm ready to play my part.
In 1972, George Harrison invited me to accompany him on a trip to India.
I got a call saying that George Lucas wanted to meet me. Of all the phone calls I've received - Oliver Stone wants to meet you; Spike Lee wants to meet you - that was the one call I never in a million years thought was going to happen.
I've always dreamed that George Lucas would call me one day and ask me to be in one of the 'Star Wars' films.
Pressure, to me, was creating a 'Star Wars' film, then sitting alone in a theater with George Lucas and showing it to him, the guy that created the word 'Wookiee' and R2-D2. That was pressure.
Jim Henson once allowed me to visit the Muppets on set and spent an entire day showing me how he and the other puppeteers performed Kermit and all the characters! After that, I was lucky enough to work with both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on many fun animation projects and learned so much from them.
My father had inklings of my cultural aspirations. He would take me to the library, things like that. But he wasn't one of those dads who had read George Orwell and was a member of the Communist party. We had no books at home.
After spending so much time in America, I started travelling with 'In Defence of English Cooking' by George Orwell. It's archaic and old-fashioned in its Englishness and reminds me of home.
If that was good enough for George Washington, it's good enough for me.
I used to bicycle to work across the George Washington Bridge, but my wife told me it wasn't professional.
Charity fundraisers are nothing new to me. In the past, I have taken part in ski races for hospitals, walks for breast cancer, and long distance bike rides for geriatric care.
There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.
I should be very sorry if the Germans disapproved of me.
When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn't permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands. I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews.
