Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My mother worked at the telephone company during the day and sold Tupperware at night. Evenings, she took classes when she could at University of Maryland's University College, bringing me along to do homework while she studied to get the degree she hoped would offer her and me greater opportunities.
I wake up every morning and I feel like I'm juggling glass balls. I live in Los Angeles, my business is run out of London, and most evenings I'm cuddled up in front of Skype, in my dressing gown, speaking with my studio in London. I travel a lot, my team travel a lot, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I always went to Ireland as a child. I remember trips to Dundalk, Wexford, Cork and Dublin. My gran was born in Dublin, and we had a lot of Irish friends, so we'd stay on their farms and go fishing. They were fantastic holidays - being outdoors all day and coming home to a really warm welcome in the evenings.
After Hurricane Sandy, my family and I stayed in our apartment in lower Manhattan before things normalized. We're lucky enough to live on a bit of high ground, so we weren't flooded... but it was intense. Since there was no light, water, or electricity, I spent a lot of time playing acoustic guitar in the evenings.
When I became majority leader in Washington, I was interviewed constantly. I was always happy to talk to the press, but I drew the line at the Sunday morning talk shows on television. After a full work week consisting of long days and frequent late evenings, I insisted on keeping my weekends free for my family and friends.
Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.
Ah, typical writing day? Well, I tend to do e-mail and the business stuff of writing more in the morning while my brain wakes up and then write more in the afternoon, sometimes from about 11 until 5, or 12 until 5. If a story is driving me nuts, I'll work more in the evenings, but usually I try not to do that. That's family time.
In 1949, when I was 2, my family moved from Yonkers, NY, to a development of brick houses in Elmont, a Long Island suburb of New York City. What I remember most about the house was the glider on our porch. I used to sit there evenings close to my father, Victor, as he talked about the moon and the stars. He taught me to dream big.
When I was 23, my Norwegian relatives taught me how to sit still. During the long sunlit evenings in the summer of 1992, my cousins would lead me across the farm to the edge of the forest, each of us lugging a folding chair. There, in a scraggly bramble of wild blueberries, we would set them down a few yards apart, each in our own little patch.
