Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Starting in my teens, I was always standing on the corner near our apartment singing harmony with friends. We'd also go to the park and sing under the bridge near the lake for the echo. When it was cold out, we'd stand in the little heated lobby in the project's administration building, where my mom paid the rent each month.
I was born in Darien, Connecticut, but in 1959, when I was four, my parents moved to the suburbs of Toronto. Then, in the late 1960s, they bought a cottage in a resort/trailer park in the Kawarthas region of Ontario, and we moved up there. I wrote a book about it in 2000 called 'Last Resort: Coming of Age in Cottage Country.'
I spent my junior year in Switzerland. On the way back home, I spent some time in England, and I remember going to Hyde Park Corner. And there was a Roman Catholic priest in his collar, standing on a soapbox, preaching the Catholic faith and being heckled by a group. And I thought, 'My goodness.' I thought that was admirable.
No country has left the E.U. since Greenland in 1985 and no one believes that delivering what the people voted for will be a walk in the park, so it's important that the person ultimately chosen by the party membership is tried and tested, capable of making tough decisions and can lead a team negotiating with E.U. institutions.
I really love Linkin Park, and I loved Chester Bennington, and it is horrible what happened to him. I grew up listening to him because my dad would make these mixtapes with a lot of different artists - Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, The Beatles, Sarah McLachlan, I just really loved Linkin Park, and their production is really sick.
I think probably one of the coolest things was when I went to play basketball at Rucker Park in Harlem. First of all, who would think that Larry the Cable Guy would go to Harlem to play basketball? And I was received like a rock star. It was amazing! There were people everywhere. There were guys walking by yelling, 'Git 'r done!'
It wasn't until sixth grade, at P.S. 168, when my teacher took us on a field trip to her house that I realized we were poor. I have no idea what my teacher's intentions were - whether she was trying to inspire us or if she actually thought visiting her Manhattan brownstone with her view of Central Park qualified as a school trip.
When you have a movie that has big stars in it... like, Will Smith does a great job in 'I Am Legend,' and it's a magnetic performance, but he's always Will Smith. That's not his fault. That's not anyone's fault. He's the center of it, and he's a movie star. But when you see something like 'Jurassic Park,' Sam Neill is Alan Grant.
In 1983, my second year of law school, I became the only white player in the Ogden Park Basketball League at 65th and Racine. My teammates joked that I integrated the league, which I guess is true. They weren't so much focused on integration as on winning, and they knew you can't teach height. 'He can't jump, but he sure is tall.'
I had a brilliant drama teacher while I was at Roland Park: Ann Mainolfi. But the school was mostly rich in academics. It wasn't like I was prepping myself for a life in acting. There, you prepped yourself to have a stable future. The school's piece de resistance is college prep - it didn't teach you how to audition for a TV show.
There is a red sandy beach in the Minas Basin in Nova Scotia that is unlike any other shore landscape I have ever seen. The world's highest tides wash its shores, and the soft cliffs of Blomidon Provincial Park are constantly crumbling away; whole trees will occasionally slide down to the sea to decay slowly in the wind and brine.
The park lies directly downwind from a slew of coal plants. Virtually all of the major contaminants in the local air and water are direct results of coal emissions. Coal produces ozone, which kills trees. Coal produces sulfates, which kill fish. No other park in the country has more ozone or sulfates than Shenandoah National Park.
When I went around promoting 'Crumb,' there would be days I'd wake up in, like, Houston or Cleveland, and I'd step outside the hotel and get no idea where I was. It all looks the same: one big corporate, consumer theme park. It's all, 'Here's the Starbucks, and here's the Gap, and we'll go over to Banana Republic and the Cineplex.'
During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by the stresses often created by poverty: domestic violence, drug abuse, gang activity.
At 10 A.M. on the Friday after the election in 2010, David Cameron's team met in his room at the Westminster Bridge Park Plaza Hotel. Cameron was clear that, unable to form a majority government, they had to begin talks with the Lib Dems about forming a coalition. But in a rare example of strategic discord, George Osborne disagreed.
'Jurassic World' takes place in a fully functional park on Isla Nublar. It sees more than 20,000 visitors every day. You arrive by ferry from Costa Rica. It has elements of a biological preserve, a safari, a zoo, and a theme park. There is a luxury resort with hotels, restaurants, nightlife and a golf course. And there are dinosaurs.
I love women, but I feel like you can't trust some of them. Some of them are liars, you know? Like I was in the park and I met this girl, she was cute and she had a dog. And I went up to her, we started talking. She told me her dog's name. Then I said, 'Does he bite?' She said, 'No.' And I said, 'Oh yeah? Then how does he eat?' Liar.
I don't think fashion week will go back to what it used to be because people are realising that the industry is completely changing. It's not just in Bryant Park any more, people are figuring out who their audience is, where they want to show, they aren't really playing by the rules. It's not so much about these editors, these buyers.
Make no mistake... 'South Park' is brutal. It takes subjects that aren't supposed to be touched at all and handles them roughly. It's true that it's crude and rude and disgusting, even in its treatment of subjects that are supposed to be solemn - spoken of only in polite whispers and polished platitudes if they're ever spoken of at all.
David Harrington asked me to write a piece for Kronos Quartet for a performance in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I live just two blocks from the park and spend many mornings running around it. The park for me symbolizes much of what I love about New York, especially the stunning diversity of Brooklyn with its myriad cultures and communities.
One of my most vivid memories of the mid-1950s is of crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the delightful young men who had been friends to both of us at Cambridge three years earlier.
My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village.
What people don't always understand is that I established a certain lifestyle for my family back in the days of 'Species' and 'Mulholland Falls' and 'The Getaway.' I wasn't about to move my six kids into a trailer park. So when people offered me work, it wasn't always the best, but I had to buy groceries, and I had to put gas in the car.
My dad's also a musician, so jazz was always around the house. When I was 11, I developed an interest in it, and he took me to Leimert Park. At that time, it was the artistic hub of L.A., and it was right in South Central. The first concert I went to, I saw Pharoah Sanders at the World Stage club there, which only holds, like, 30 people.
'The Conversation' is one that, if you watch 'The Conversation' for the opening sequence, where you hear a conversation taking place as the master - this zoom from way up is zooming in over a park. And I was just absolutely blown away by it because you can hear exactly what's happening, but you don't see. You've got no idea who's talking.
When I was four, five, my granddad took me over to the park to play basketball. There was no way I was getting a ball into the net, but he said we stayed there until I got it in. I always remember that. He used to say to me, 'When you think you're going to do something, you won't ever stop.' I think that's the person I've been all my life.
I would like to wish Harry Redknapp the best of luck filling my old seat in the dugout at Queen's Park Rangers. It was one of the achievements of my managerial career getting QPR back into the Premier League after a 15-year absence and I would be very sad to see them go back down after all the hard work the players, staff and myself put in.
Years ago, children helped my brother search for his lost ball at Jackson Park Golf Course in Chicago - and even offered to sell it back to him on the next tee. That entrepreneurial spirit, on the site of the 1893 World's Fair - which introduced Cracker Jacks to the United States - exemplifies America, to say nothing of American public golf.
You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park, even after many, many hours spent there with them, and many hours of conversation. But if - knock on wood - anything should ever happen to your dog, these nameless non-strangers will rally, sympathize, offer to help, and hold your hand. I know this from experience.
For Christmas 1999, my husband surprised me with a trip to Disney World. Along with our boys, we were standing on the roof of the Contemporary Hotel at midnight on New Year's Eve 2000 watching fireworks explode over every amusement park in Orlando. It was a magical way to celebrate the millennial, and a never-to-be-forgotten Christmas present.
We put on shows at Golden Gate Park with the Dead and Jefferson Airplane, and the groups were part of the community they emerged out of, not some superstars. We had multiple stages, diversions, communal entertainment. There is something slightly fascistic about sitting in a huge auditorium focusing all the energy on one group far away on stage.
My family was lower middle class, and my parents both worked, so we couldn't take proper vacations. We'd go for three days to Santa Barbara or to the desert, so my first real vacation came was when I was 12, when friends of my parents were taking their kids away. We went to Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Park in Arizona and Utah.
