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So it - we have one enduring, uh, idea that will always live on with the Smothers Brothers, that 'Mom always liked you best.' We're the universal, uh, feeling that every child, every sibling has had somewhere along the line. Or, 'Who did she like best?' And that became kind of a little mantra.
Throughout her life my mother, Rose, prayed for good health. My father left when I was 12 and money was tight, so she couldn't afford to take time off work. I have a younger sister and three older brothers, and she used to panic that we'd be taken into care if she wasn't able to look after us.
The truth is that killing innocent people is always wrong - and no argument or excuse, no matter how deeply believed, can ever make it right. No religion on earth condones the killing of innocent people; no faith tradition tolerates the random killing of our brothers and sisters on this earth.
An oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household... carries discord and rebellion into every home of the nation.
It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.
I'm a hybrid-genre person, which a lot of people find confusing. I grew up listening to American country music and rock n' roll made between 1955 and 1959. The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry were my first musical loves and are still what I am most moved by. Roy Orbison came a little bit later.
When Phil and I hit that one spot where I call it 'The Everly Brothers,' I don't know where it is. 'Cause it's not me and it's not him. It's the two of us together. I sing the lead, and so I can drift off. Then we'll come back in together and the whole thing happens again. It amazes me sometimes.
I was born in a middle class Muslim family, in a small town called Myonenningh in a northern part of Bangladesh in 1962. My father is a qualified physician; my mother is a housewife. I have two elder brothers and one younger sister. All of them received a liberal education in schools and colleges.
We are a mixed up people. We have mixed up ways of naming, too... When my father's brothers and sisters first went to colonial schools, they had to produce a surname. They also had to show they were good Christians by adopting a western name. They adopted my grandfather's name as surname. Wainaina.
Even though I have a nice house, nice family, the rest of my generation is still in South Central L.A. My cousins, my brothers, my sisters, they don't wanna move out. They don't want to and they don't have the means to sustain it. That's where my heart is and that's what I think about all the time.
As a kid, my parents had the typical stuff going on in the home, like Bee Gees, The Carpenters. Then I got exposed to what my brothers were listening to: a lot of classic rock, Led Zeppelin. It was around the mid-'80s when the whole Electro-Techno-Pop-House music thing started happening in Chicago.
I took a couple of classes in clowning, but that was more like Lucille Ball kind of slapstick, not Ringling Brothers. But we had to do things silently, and the teacher would do this running commentary. 'Does this make Clown sad? Oh, Clown doesn't like that, does Clown?' Always 'Clown.' Never a name.
Seek out your brothers and sisters of other cultures and join together in building alliances to put an end to all forms of racial discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice. There are people of good will of all races, religions, and nations who will join you in common quest for the betterment of society.
My parents met because my father was an actor friend of one of my mom's brothers, but my mother has never set foot on the stage - she's quite shy. So it's a strange thing because people say, 'Oh, coming from acting parents,' when the idea of acting would literally make my mother just want to throw up.
When counting on learning from innovation, there are great successes but also failures. The Wright Brothers invented the aircraft and started an amazing process of innovation, where we now have planes that carry 500 passengers. Along the way there were some silly looking vehicles that crashed early on.
I am a fan of the Coen brothers. I'm not a fanatic. I'm a big admirer. They create unique worlds, and there is a real atmosphere to their films. Not everyone can get that. That's a massive part of their appeal: you can recognise them. Like all the great directors or artists, you know it when you see it.
When I was 11, I moved to Los Angeles to live with my father and stepmother and my half brothers. I became really close to my stepmother, and I am still very close to my brothers. My stepmother is the actress Shirley Jones, who was in 'The Partridge Family' alongside me, so we worked together for years.
I have always been a letter writer, and I found when my numbers got over half a million, I couldn't think about how many people there were out there. I had to think as if I were writing a letter to my brothers and sisters, to my good friends with whom I have had a correspondence since I could hold a pen.
No one dislikes LL Cool J. If you meet LL Cool J, you fall in love with LL Cool J. LL and I had mutual friends, and he and I had always talked about doing something. My fans know LL's music. And I love him - we're blood brothers at this point. We've been through the fire together. I know no finer person.
I grew up with my cousins, who were as close as brothers, and frankly, I didn't like what girls were expected to do. I liked horseback riding, playing football, going to rodeos. I wanted to be in jeans all the time, and I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to conform to a certain standard, so I didn't.
My favorite Wes Anderson movie is 'The Darjeeling Limited,' because I have two other brothers, and I just feel that connection so well. All of his films have something so great and unique about them, that I don't know how I would be if I don't like them. I wouldn't be me. My personality is his sensibility.
Five days after the Tsarnaev brothers blew up Boston's most sacred event, and just 24 hours after one brother was killed and the other was caught, everyone decided that it was OK to play baseball at Fenway again. The game happened on a Saturday afternoon, preceded by an emotional ceremony and many prayers.
I'm blessed to come from a family with five brothers. We're all physical and athletic and like to work out, like to be outside, like to throw the ball around. We spent our entire childhoods on some kind of corner or in a field. We still do a Turkey Bowl every Thanksgiving. It gets competitive, man. Bloody.
So when you're following guys like Kyle O'Reilly and Bobby Fish or The Young Bucks or Jay Lethal or The Briscoe Brothers, and you're going out and trying to really stick out and have a very memorable, talked-about main event, or the match of the night, like the main event should be, it's really challenging.
It's tough growing up where I grew up. My family is very small and really tight. Just being around the neighborhood, my brothers were always around. I didn't want to be in any trouble because I knew my mom or brothers would find out. I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I just tried to do everything right.
Finding original source material is not easy, but when something special like 'Edge of Tomorrow' comes along, everybody recognized it. I wasn't swimming against the stream. Warner Brothers immediately supported it, Tom Cruise signed on instantly; Emily Blunt, who was our first choice, signed on immediately.
I don't want our white working class sisters and brothers to feel as though their pain is not important because it is. But at the same time, I want my white sisters and brothers to understand that when we talk about income and wealth inequality, that disproportionately African Americans suffer a little more.
I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library.
Mobile is a seaport town, and we ate a lot of seafood. We'd go fishing, we'd catch our fish and we'd eat our fish. It was a ritual on Saturday morning for all my family - my grandfather, my brothers, my uncles, my father - to go fishing, and then the ladies of the family would clean the fish and fry them up.
When I sit here and see that the eight brothers from the neighborhood that I grew up with still have success, it had to be magical. I doubt if you get another 'Wu-Tang Clan.' That might be harder than getting the new 'Jackson Five.' Certain groups you only get one time, and we just happened to be that group.
I've always been part of comedy. One of the things about our family was that if we were reasonably funny with each other, particularly my two brothers and myself, when my father was upset with something you'd want to make sure in some way you made him laugh. Because when he didn't laugh, you were in trouble!
People ask me about 'The Hurt Locker' a lot, and it's an incredible piece of filmmaking - as are 'Band of Brothers' and 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Apocalypse Now.' But they're not necessarily true to war in a literal sense. What they are, really, are brilliant movies about Hollywood's idea of war.
I grew up as an only child, so inherently, most of my life was centered around me. My parents taught me to play well with others and to share my toys, but I was still an only child who didn't have to share my parent's attention with siblings. As great as my childhood was, I always wanted brothers and sisters.
I was one of those children forced into fighting at the age of 13, in my country Sierra Leone, a war that claimed the lives of my mother, father and two brothers. I know too well the emotional, psychological and physical burden that comes with being exposed to violence as a child or at any age for that matter.
I started in junior high doing the splits and flips and that kind of stuff. It was kind of the acceptable thing to do. But I had two older brothers, so I was a tomboy. I was the cute tomboy who could put on the skirt but then go tackle you or something. I was a little rough around the edges for a pretty woman!
When I was 11 or 12 - a young boy in Japan - one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there's a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.
After coating pasta with tomato-rich meat sauce, my mom would drizzle the bottom of a nonstick pot with oil and put it all back in to form a dark crust of tangled noodles. Once she unmolded it at the table like a cake, my brothers and I would excitedly cut into it, verbally laying claim to our preferred pieces.
It's so odd because I don't even know if I'm cut out for it, but being a movie star guy, I sort of end up gravitating toward the Coen brothers. That's one of the reasons my wife and I moved to L.A.: that however much of a pipe dream that would be, I moved to L.A. because I'd love to work with the Coen brothers.
A lot of people think the best work I've done was nonfiction - the 'Brothers and Keepers' book. But I think of myself as a fiction writer. And I think, if my work is put in perspective, all the books would be a continual questioning of what's true and what's not true, what's documented and what's not documented.
I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development.
Let's face it: Most of us don't realize it, but we are failing our kids as reading role models. The best role models are in the home: brothers, fathers, grandfathers; mothers, sisters, grandmothers. Moms and dads, it's important that your kids see you reading. Not just books - reading the newspaper is good, too.
My brothers and sisters and I spoke in a language called Egg Latin. In the early '50s in Canada, this became a fad way of talking among certain people. It's based on the concept that in every syllable before the vowel and after the preceding constant you insert the word 'egg.' So, my name Phil would be 'Pegghil.'
I used to cheerlead in high school, and I had the biggest crush on one of my teammates' brothers. I was a great tumbler, so when he showed up at practice one day, I tried to impress him, but I ended up landing on my face! When I got off the ground, I had rug burn on my nose. I was in tears because it hurt so bad!
Part of me goes back to being 8 years old and going on the train 45 minutes to wait at a bank to get Ernie Banks' autograph. Or when I was a ball boy, becoming best buddies with some of the undrafted or late-drafted guys, them becoming like our big brothers, and then the pain of cut day and watching them get cut.
I wish I could sit back and say, 'Oh, I'm gonna wait for a Merchant-Ivory film to come my way. Or Ivory-Merchant. Whatever it's called. But you just take what's given and then, hopefully, down the road you can be more choosy and only do, say, Wayans brothers movies. That's my goal: to be more Merchant-Ivory-Wayans.
My father passed away after three years of debilitating disease, which transformed a very strong and bright man into a real wreck. And that is hard. You have to get out of that stronger, if you can, which I was lucky to be able to. I was the eldest of the family, and I had to support my mother and help my brothers.
I believe I am strong mentally. My breaking points might be bigger than most players. I think it's because of the way I grew up with my two older brothers. They pushed my limits quite often - once every day, I think! I think that played a big role in my breaking point being bigger than most players. Not all players.
My favourite book as a child was an old 'Newne's Children's Encyclopaedia' which my grandfather had bought just before World War II and donated to our family after seeing how interested we were in it. Each volume had special chapters called 'Things Boys can Do.' My brothers and I would pick out interesting projects.
Improvisation has to do with exploring something like two brothers in a room together. You find out things about situations by discovering the things that they aren't saying. It's a way to explore scenes. Sometimes it's more useful than others, but it's always there to see if there's anything that you might improve.
I write first drafts by hand. Never do I open an umbrella inside the house. I don't predict wins or losses. I used to stand on a certain piece of rug if my brothers and husband were watching football and their team got in trouble - but now the luck went out of that rug. If a circle is involved, I try to go clockwise.