I always imitated other people and thought, 'Well, maybe I'll do standup,' but I was too afraid for that.
When I was little, when I was a kid, I used to sit in front of the TV and just say what the TV says. It's how I got good at imitating people.
I don't know if I change my act from century to century. Sometimes I'm onstage doing imitations and references to people who have been dead for 50 years.
Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it.
Britain's unique success as an industrialised nation-state prompted strong imitative endeavours not only across Europe, but also in Asia. Now many people, who were once humiliated into a sense of nationality by British rule, loom larger than their former masters.
It would be really great if people would realize that stars are only people with the same weaknesses and flaws, not immaculate idols.
On the religious Right and religious people in general have the feeling that the world is not just material, the world is not just there for us to do what we want with. That our bodies, things have an immaterial essence, a spiritual essence that God is in all of us.
I see teenagers or people who are 21 and think, 'I was an idiot at that age.' I was running around New York like a crazy woman. Thank God I only had three and a half cents to my name. I was too immature to handle success then.
There's a level of immaturity to people who just can't clean up after themselves.
On the question of comfort women, when my thought goes to these people, who have been victimized by human trafficking and gone through immeasurable pain and suffering beyond description, my heart aches. And on this point, my thought has not changed at all from previous prime ministers.
Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.
Some of the things you read you get an immediate reaction to so I've stopped reading things now. I do worry about my family though. Some people do try some nasty things to get at them and try and get a reaction from them.
Bush sees the evil as out there in the wider world, residing in people who 'hate freedom'. Look at his immediate response to the pictures of prisoner abuse; this is not what Americans do, these are not our values.
The most striking quality common to all primitive art is its intense vitality. It is something made by a people with a direct and immediate response to life.
Famines are political. We all know that the immediate response to a famine must be food, aid, and shelter, but we should also look hard at what else can be done earlier on. It is not the lack of food but the fact that some people cannot get access to the food that causes the famine.
I remember turning onto the street. I saw barricades and police officers and, just, people everywhere. When I saw all of that, I immediately thought that it was Mardi Gras. I had no idea that they were here to keep me out of the school.
In Japan, I was immensely impressed by the politeness, industrious nature and conscientiousness of the Japanese people.
I think people are understanding that I'm immensely proud of my father. If people talk to me about him, I'll certainly respond. And there's a certain generation that still talks about him right off. And I take that with gratefulness and with gratitude.
People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.
To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside.
