I've always loved silent movies. I recently saw 'Tilly's Punctured Romance' at the Academy, which is the first comedy made with Charlie Chaplin in 1914, and I sat there, and I couldn't believe that the entire audience of 2,000 people were laughing that hard from a movie made in 1914 - and there were no words; it was all faces.

I feel like there's already a written narrative going on everywhere. All the different situations and realities you're in, like words floating by. It's something that I didn't start thinking about until recently, but you can hitch that ride, that narrative that's already been created. You just have to read it and write it down.

Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds.

I'm a character actor and I get lost in these characters, so I think it's only recently that people have begun to connect dots and go, 'Oh, that's the same person that did this, this, this, this and this!' which I take as a compliment. One time somebody called me an illusionist, and that was the nicest thing anyone has ever said.

I recently caught myself giving a pretty girl the cold shoulder because I felt intimidated. She was so gorgeous, and it made me feel insecure. I wasn't even aware until someone pointed it out to me. I was so embarrassed! I recognized those thoughts and made a point to be more friendly to her because there was no reason to be cold.

I was assigned to the Waffen-SS but was never involved in any crime. Besides, I always felt the need to write about my experiences in a larger context one day. This has only developed recently, now that I have overcome my inner aversion to writing an autobiography in the first place, specifically one having to do with my younger years.

Recently a study proved that working from a larger, less cluttered computer screen increases concentration. I could have told them that. And yes, I write first drafts with a mechanical pencil and a yellow legal pad. There's good reason for this primitive behavior: I am a crackerjack typist. My hand moves far more quickly than my brain.

The global phenomenon of poverty tourism - or 'poorism' - has become increasingly popular during the past few years. Tourists pay to be guided through the favelas of Brazil and the shantytowns of South Africa. The recently opened Los Angeles Gang Tour carries visitors through battle-scarred territories of urban violence and deprivation.

My husband recently made me try on a bikini. A bikini is not so much a garment as a cloth-based reminder that your parts have been migrating all these years. My waist, I realized that day in the dressing room, has completely disappeared beneath my rib cage, which now rests directly on my hips. I'm exhibiting continental drift in reverse.

America is a country defined by a set of ideas, and when people choose to accept those ideas, they should be able to become Americans, as fully so as any - and perhaps more so than most - regardless of how recently they or their ancestors arrived upon our shores. This is the true American tradition, which as conservatives we must defend.

The critical thing about Western democracy is the fact that you usually have a transition of power without bloodshed. That is an enormous advantage. But still, democracy as we know it was only invented recently in the West, historical speaking. It did not really work in ancient Rome. It functioned for less than 200 years in ancient Athens.

My first book, about Ruby Ridge, was made into a miniseries on CBS in 1996, and since then, I've dabbled in Hollywood, pitched a few things, sold a couple of screenplays and a pilot that I wrote with a buddy from Spokane, flirted with seeing 'Citizen Vince' as a film, and most recently, adapted 'The Financial Lives of the Poets' as a script.

I use dull colors in my drawings because I started out using a root beer base, because it seemed like an interesting idea, and when it turned out that it worked quite well as an ink, I started using other colors that would complement it, like grays from Higgins black writing ink and, more recently, Dr. P.H. Martin's olive green and vermilion.

Syria is important because it lies at the heart of a region critical to U.S. security, a region that is home to friends and partners and one of our closest allies. It is important because the Syrian regime possesses stores of chemical weapons that they have recently used on a large scale and that we cannot allow to fall into terrorists' hands.

If he could go back, choose another career, my father would have liked to have been an environmentalist of some kind, which is why he'd really like to be remembered for something almost nobody knows he did: naming Earth Day. It agitated him to look up Earth Day on Wikipedia recently and not see his name anywhere. So a few days ago, I added it.

Threats of trade protectionism, plus unilateral actions on the exchange-rate front, such as the heavy interventions of China, Japan, and Switzerland in the currency markets - not to mention the retaliatory tariffs recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives - endanger growth prospects and could further depress financial market confidence.

At a earlier age, I was kind of into a pretty large scope or range of music from Hieroglyphics and the Hobo Junction guys and all that to like a lot of stuff that was in New York like Diamond D, Nas, Brand Nubian, of course Biggie, OC, Organized Confusion, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Digable Planets, who I just saw recently, and they killed it.

Share This Page