I actually started out as a writer and then converted to illustration because I realised that there was a dearth of good illustrators in genre fiction, at least in Australia at that time.
It has long been said the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. Automatic enrollment for insurance of 401k loans would add an additional certainty. Fewer Americans would suffer the unnecessary loss of retirement savings due to unanticipated and untimely misfortune in an already stressful time of need.
Now is not the time to compromise on the economy. Instead, we should be doing everything in our power to support long-term economic growth. Permanent repeal of the death tax will mean more high-quality, high-paying jobs for Americans.
I need a long and lingering death to make sure that I have time to have a deathbed conversion.
What do most people say on their deathbed? They don't say, 'I wish I'd made more money.' What they say is, 'I wish I'd spent more time with my family and done more for society or my community.'
When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.
You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say.
Really, at a time when they're debating when and where a nativity scene can be used, this is the kind of stuff we need to have out there - outside of the church.
It's a debilitating process, working with the studios. With the length of time it takes for drafts and development deals, your enthusiasm is gone before you're ready to make the film.
When my brother died in 1966, my father began a grieving process that lasted almost twenty-five years. For all that time, he suffered from chronic, debilitating headaches. I took him to some of the country's major medical facilities, but no one could cure him of his pain.
To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct - crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is!
'Zabriskie Point' was a time when I was in a lot of change and flux, and these incredible visuals hit me like they had rearranged the organs in my body. The ending and the free-floating debris and everything is an image that burned itself in my consciousness.
I had a really hard time after 9/11. I was basically living across the street from the World Trade Center, and a big chunk of debris fell on top of my building, and the roof caved in. I thought I was going to die. Really. I'd never thought that before, but on that day I sat there and thought 'I cannot believe it's going to end this way.'
I remember the last time the Grateful Dead played in Seattle, at the Seattle Center. I was living there, and after the show, I was walking to work near there, and I'd never seen so much debris. There were mountains of garbage.
Debt ceiling is something that, you know, any time the president asks for the authority to increase the debt ceiling, the debt burden on our children and grandchildren, I think that requires a pretty serious discussion, robust debate.
At a time when the GOP is playing games with the debt limit, a member of the Supreme Court is refusing to recuse himself from matters he has a financial interest in, and middle class incomes are stagnant, many want to change the subject. I don't. This was a prank, and a silly one. I'm focused on my work.
Century-old records are the closest thing we have to a time machine. To listen to the voice of Theodore Roosevelt or the piano playing of Claude Debussy is to feel the years falling away like autumn leaves from a maple tree.
When a movie is about to come out on its initial debut, there are a lot of people involved - the financiers, the studio and the producers and also, many times, the foreign distributors. So it is a time of tremendous pressure and uncertainty.
A lot of things have changed since I made my debut in 2004. The way cricket is played has changed. The kind of players that are coming in the Indian team are drastically different than what we were used to. My role is quite the same. You only evolve with time, and that's what I am trying to do.
Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year - and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!
