I was 28 before I started putting on productions. I got in the back door by doing fringe shows and a lot of assisting, and I learned on the job. There weren't many female directors when I was starting out. I slowly gained confidence and understanding of the theater, but on my own terms.

I was in a really crummy pop-punk band. I think we did a whole bunch of Blink-182 covers, and we were on the fringe of losers and jocks. So we invited all the cool kids to come watch us play in our bass player's brother's bedroom. And it was terrible, but everyone thought we were so cool.

Just about everything put out by Top Shelf and Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics is what I keep up with. And once in a while, I'll read the more mainstream comics - I like Grant Morrison's writing and some of Warren Ellis' stuff, although maybe they're more on the fringe of the mainstream.

I've gotten death threats, yes. I have. I think anytime you shine a spotlight on homosexuality or minorities and you try and say they are as normal or as worthy as acceptance as others, the people who are on the fringe don't like that and they will come after you. And they have come after me.

I'm a huge fan of the game. It's beyond a fringe benefit of obviously getting to work at the league office. I watch a ton of games in person, on television, on all forms of new media I follow the league. And so it's just beyond my wildest imaginations to me to now be the commissioner of the NBA.

I find the whole concept of being 'sexy' embarrassing and confusing. If I do a photo-shoot, people desperately want to change me - dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there's the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that's not me.

There's this divergence out there between the very small and the very large with the middle disappearing. There is something paradoxical going on where there is this access and we can seek out things on the fringes, but that doesn't describe the overall reality, because the big are bigger than ever.

Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the Tea Party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The Tea Party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern.

And we should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to concepts on the fringe of science fiction. Flaky American futurologists aren't always wrong. They remind us that a superintelligent machine is the last instrument that humans may ever design - the machine will itself take over in making further steps.

For me, growing up in Detroit, scarves meant cold weather. But I remember working in a store, and we had some silk scarves - like, wide scarves with fringe - and because I had seen the English rockers wearing skinny silk scarves, I took the scarves, cut and sewed them, and made them long - almost like a tie.

For a long time, because I'm pretty tall, I was scared to wear heels, but now I wear them all the time. I feel like I'm still discovering my stage style, but I love - well, I'm not a huge color person onstage, but I am in real life. I like short stuff, big heels, fringe, lots of fringe, sometimes sparkle, yeah!

I was always prepared for my 'Fringe' journey to end immediately. I had only signed up for a guest role but they kept bringing me back in the third season as a recurring character. So pretty much every time I went to film a 'Fringe' episode I kind of said goodbye to the show, but then they kept bringing me back.

McCain courted in 2008 what I would call 'fringe' evangelicals, in part because evangelicals were skeptical of his commitment to values voters. McCain's embrace of Palin came after having to scuttle endorsements from John Hagee and Rod Parsley, charismatics who believed in Armageddon and fiercely supported Israel.

I didn't have the money to put myself through drama school, so I thought - naively - that if I wrote a play and put it on at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, agents would see me and that would be my ticket to Hollywood. I wrote a musical; an acting coach saw it and put me on his course for free while I wrote for his company.

I was incredibly intimidated playing Lincoln Lee in the alternate universe, which was the first role I played on 'Fringe' because I was actually the head of a Fringe division and the head of a unit that was going out and I had to lead entire SWAT teams of people. I really questioned in myself, 'Can I carry that responsibility?'

If the Latterday Saints had not abandoned plural marriage, they would have remained a fringe religion and would never have moved into mainstream American culture. Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thrives. It is one of the fastest growing religions in the country and is the most successful American-born religion.

When I was little, my father was one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Suddenly - and how it happened to him was always a great mystery to me - he wasn't a star anymore; he was on the fringe. From the time I was 14, I was always conscious of a sense of worry, of terrific insecurity - agents, phony talk, the waits for the phone to ring.

The fantasy world of Movement Conservatives is no longer fringe talk. The leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination embrace it. They are playing to a chorus of true believers, and they are preaching what that choir wants to hear. They are following the same pattern Eric Hoffer identified as the path to authoritarianism.

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