People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction.
I think my iTunes is a kind of strange and embarrassing mix of show tunes and artists that I have no perception of whether or not they're huge or not, you know? I'm the kind of person who doesn't realize that The Arcade Fire is a big deal, but then I expect everybody to know Cocoon, and people tend to not know Cocoon.
Arcade Fire has kept their indie cred. They will sell out stadiums yet still have underdog status. But when you're a band like Coldplay, people are waiting to knock you down.
L.A. is so focused on TV and film that theater is kind of an arcane sport. People look at you like you're doing something cute.
Behind the proscenium arch, you can't always hear what people in the audience are saying.
A lot of period dramas can appear quite arch to most people, stuffy.
I was at St. Louis's very first tea party and stood across the mighty Mississippi on the Arch steps with a bunch of wide-eyed, virgin protesters who were just as shocked as I was to see the amount of people who had assembled.
I've come to the conclusion that mythology is really a form of archaeological psychology. Mythology gives you a sense of what a people believes, what they fear.
So much of the physical world has been explored. But the deluge of data I get to investigate really lets me chart new territory. Genetic data from people living today forms an archaeological record of what happened to their ancestors 10,000 years ago.
There are huge pluses in Scottish archaeology that you simply don't get elsewhere. Partly that's to do with the tragedy of the clearances, and that so much of the landscape has been owned by so few people that didn't want it messed around with.
A lot of people are surprised when I talk so much about the present, but politics is just a crucial part of archaeology.
Most people in archeology find their specialties in strange and unique ways. I always wanted to do archaeology, and then the time came for me to actually be in the field, and it was excruciatingly boring. Excavation is really, really boring.
The rawness and the richness of music on vinyl almost went away, but it still seems to be on a lot of people's radar, and for good reason. It does something different than more accessible means of music playing, like MP3 players and downloads and whatnot. You get in front of these archaic contraptions that go 'round and 'round.
If people want a sense of purpose they should get it from their archbishop. They should certainly not get it from their politicians.
I think there's a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.
Even when I was Archbishop of Wales and working with new bishops, I used to say, not realising quite how true it was, 'One of the things you will do as a bishop is disappoint people'.
I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.
I was interested in dark subject matter for sure, including folklore, fairy tales, mythology, archetypal stories of people going into the bowels of the forest.
'Divergent' is a story about people who don't fit into a category - that is a big part of the message - but it's also about conformity and forcing people into these simple archetypes. At the end of the day, humans don't exist like that. We're multifaceted.
There are many people making a difference. I mean, Dr. King never held an office. Gandhi never held an office. There are people who are archetypes in our society who have never held office and made a difference.
