When you look what is happening in this country with the debt, the deficit, the CBO coming out and saying once again we're going to have a trillion dollar plus deficit in 2012, the fourth straight year, and unemployment may be going back up to 8.9 or maybe nine percent by the end of the year, these are serious situations that are going.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, 'One of these days I'm going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.' That's all I've ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

A decade ago, I lived in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, as the treasury attache to our embassy there, and I was, of course, on the ground in the Middle East whenever the Arab Spring started, and it's fast-forward a decade later, nine years later. It's hard to believe that I am still working on this issue. You know, here in the State Department.

Most of the time I don't force records. I'm not one of these guys that put records out every nine, 10 months. I'm pretty long between records. I've only had a few in my career. I kind of wait until I feel I have really strong songs. I don't know if they're going to change the world or not, but I dig 'em, and if I dig 'em we make a record.

The tactics in NWSL are so chaotic. It's so about physicality. It's both teams attacking with nine players, and it's just so open on the transitions, really fast-paced to the point of being out of control. The Damallsvenskan is a little extreme on the other side: it's so under control, there are 20 passes strung before you even go forward.

I was always with a single mom, and we never had schedules or anything. We were just Bohemian, us against the world, which was kind of great, but it certainly didn't breed security. I've gotten hyper-sensitive to schedules and bath time and eating at the dinner table. We don't just 'Bohemian' go out at nine o'clock and go get Chinese food.

'To Kill a Mockingbird' is really two stories. One is a coming-of-age tale told from the point of view of Scout Finch, a girl of about nine, and her slightly older brother, Jem. The second story concerns their father, attorney Atticus Finch, who has been appointed to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping a white woman.

As I start to think about what I want to do next, there are eight or nine networks I would be thrilled to work with. I remember developing at FX and the executives there telling me, 'We don't want to do shows that 20 million people kind of like; we want to do the show that 2 million people really like.' That's such a refreshing thing to hear.

For every album, I look at where I'm at in my career and think of a title that kind of represents that. And for me, 'Night Train' was kind of a metaphor for where things have gone, from being on one bus with 12 other guys, pulling a trailer my first few years on the road, to now. We're out here with six or seven buses and eight or nine semis.

I think that, initially, I was most passionate about music and particularly about playing the piano. I started playing when I was nine, and I was obsessed with it, really. I wouldn't even go spend the night at a friend's unless they had a piano. But I didn't have the chops, the extraordinary talent to be able to play the piano professionally.

At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn't collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.

My childhood, I wouldn't say it was bad. It helped me grow up. I stayed out of trouble. My parents taught me what's wrong and right, and knowing that I had a little brother following me, I had to make sure I was doing the right thing so he knows what's right, too. I was in the house nine days out of 10. There wasn't nothing good outside for me.

Teachers complain a lot about how tough their job is. But, you know, the day begins in most schools at nine o'clock, ends at 3.30 P.M. They have six weeks' holiday during the summer, two weeks' holiday at Easter and at Christmas. Yes, they don't just work when they're at school, but even so, compared to a lot of other jobs, it's not that tough.

Nine out of nine architects start with a sketch, and then they say, 'What should we make it out of?' I start from the bottom up - what should it be made out of - and then I worry about what should it look like. The material, the color of the material, the way it feels, and the way you respond to it is every bit as valid as the form or the shape.

I remember during the 1970 World Cup, the whole country stopped to focus on the matches. I was nine years old. I would sit in front of the radio with my father, and we would listen to the magic of football. It was like the matches were a dramatic story being told to us. It was a kind of art, in my opinion. It was like a painting or a great novel.

When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged and continued. I even wanted to write my memoirs at the age of ten. At twelve I wrote poetry, mostly about friendship - 'Ode to Friendship.' Then my class wanted to make a film, and one little boy suggested that I write the script.

When the founder of World Energy Solutions Inc. assembled his first board in 2000, it consisted of nine investors and friends. The group met quarterly, generally affirming Domaleski's every action. But the Worcester, Mass., company, which auctions electricity and gas credits, lacked customers and financing. It needed more from its board to survive.

It was such an amazing experience to be able to spend nine days on a boat with these Greenpeace people. Some of them were scientists and some were crew members working on the ship. Just to hear their stories, like what drew them to Greenpeace in the first place and what they've been through. Every single second of the day they work to save the planet, which makes me as an actor feel quite insignificant.

Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective's struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective - but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.

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