In 1987, I was in Edinburgh doing my first one-man show. I took part in a kickabout with some fellow comedians and tripped over my trousers and heard this cracking sound in my leg. A couple of days later I went into a coma and was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism.

When I left the WWF after SummerSlam '93, I didn't leave there thinking this is the end of my career. A couple of months later, when the neck injury took place and everything and I had that conversation with the doctor, I took the insurance and I got out of the ring.

I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them - active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular - to try and end the war.

We were sitting on the bus one day and there were 5 of us hanging out. There was only one beer left in the cooler and we actually all took a little cup and split it. It was a pathetic day in a rock and roll when five grown men have to be sitting there sharing a beer.

There's a huge cost in being bipartisan, a tradition started by Newt Gingrich when he took over the House in 1994 and has continued forward, that you dare not vote against the Republican Party even if you're voting against your own initiatives and your own interests.

I like the fact that by mimicking the way memory works, a writer can actually write in a fluid way - one solid scene doesn't have to fall on another solid scene, you can just have a fragment that then dovetails into another one that took place 30 years apart from it.

In 1906, just as we were definitely giving up the old shed laboratory where we had been so happy, there came the dreadful catastrophe which took my husband away from me and left me alone to bring up our children and, at the same time, to continue our work of research.

I used to worry a lot and regret a lot before I took on this whole concept of karma. But now I understand that destiny is what it's all about. I still push ahead and look forward to achieving certain goals but I try not to lay up expectations that they have to happen.

For the first actual comedy-comedy I did, I took a comedy class in New York, which was full of slightly unhinged people. It was a pretty depressing crowd, very angry and strange people. But then I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I loved those people.

In order to make a name for myself I took notice of the craziest wildest son-of-a-guns out there, and how they would receive a lot of the attention from the local wrestling periodicals. I decided that I would become an oddity, and that's how I have existed ever since.

Acting was always something fun to do on the side growing up, but I never really took it seriously. I would do a commercial every few months, and that paid my school tuition. But in high school, I was mostly into sports and didn't go out for stuff during those seasons.

I discovered that wearing the veil is not suitable for a woman who wants to work in activism and the public domain. People need to see you, to associate and relate to you. It is not stated in my religion to wear the veil; it is a traditional practice, so I took it off.

On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.

Abu Musab al-Suri is someone I got to know pretty well because he's a Syrian. Very bright guy, lived in London. He actually was the person who took myself and correspondent Peter Arnett and the cameraman, Peter Juvenal, to interview bin Laden for his first TV interview.

I think 'Gatsby' is hobbled, in part, by its status as a Great American Novel. People kind of roll their eyes before they've even opened it, treat it with a 'been there, done that' attitude. I know I did. It took me years to re-open the novel and see how much I'd missed.

I went to a wedding in St. Maarten, and we took a boat ride over to Anguilla for a day. We went to a beach that had the whitest sand I had ever seen before in my life. I was in the water up to the middle of my chest and could still see my feet. It was the clearest water.

I was the guy who didn't get a cool little apartment. I took one for the team. I liked having the place we could make noise in, the place that could be the center of the music. I sat down and calculated it one day, and over the years, I've had something like 38 roommates.

I remember I took a music course in junior year of high school, and some girl brought in 'Teardrops On My Guitar,' and she was like, 'Isn't this song great?' And everyone was like, 'Who's Taylor Swift?' And now, every time I listen to Taylor Swift, I remember that moment.

When my brother died in 1966, my father began a grieving process that lasted almost twenty-five years. For all that time, he suffered from chronic, debilitating headaches. I took him to some of the country's major medical facilities, but no one could cure him of his pain.

My dad Chester was a pianist and later a well-known television entertainer so football was never really something that was on his radar. However when I was a young boy a family friend took me to see an Arsenal game and from that moment on I was totally and utterly hooked.

Those who served, and those who continue to serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and we can never forget the importance of their commitment to our Nation.

When people chat to me about my childhood and getting into horses, they're like, 'Was it like the birds sang and the sun came out? Was it an amazing experience?' I'm like, 'No, it was rubbish. I was frightened. I was pretty unbalanced, and most ponies took advantage of me.'

I used to think that the British press were particularly awful to Cherie Blair. I think Blair's foreign policy was a complete disaster, but the British press, when they wanted to explain why Blair took unexpected moves, they did create Cherie as the power behind the throne.

When I first started my character in my first match with Alicia Fox, I walked out with my hair in a ponytail, and as soon as I got into the ring, I took the ponytail out and let my hair down, because I knew it would get messed up, and I didn't want to look ridiculous on TV.

My earliest memory is a picnic in the park near our house, which was next to Wimbledon Common. Why on earth we went to a park when we lived so near the common is a mystery, but it had formal gardens and lawns - perhaps it was that very difference that took my parents there.

I rented a place that I could have dogs - not in my house. I rented a big place. And I was able to have the SPCA every end of the week bring many, many dogs to me. They all were in nice places, clean, everything was fine. I took good care of them. And so many people called.

I brought a Border Collie back home to Vancouver from Wales - where some of my ancestors are from - and needed to challenge him in other ways than just being my pet. So I investigated sheep herding and took a few lessons, and decided I was probably learning more than my dog!

Mr. Chairman, on September 11, we were attacked by terrorists who took advantage of weaknesses in our border security. After infiltrating our country, the terrorists were able to conceal their real identities, and thereby plot their attacks without fear of being apprehended.

My parents got me a sewing machine for Christmas during my senior year of high school. I made three pieces of clothing and had a fashion show at the end of the year, where we had to wear the clothes that we made. I took it to a whole new level; I made all my friends clothes.

At the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in Austria, there was a lot of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in Austria was much more pervasive than in Germany. And Austrians took to Nazi ideas and anti-Semitism much more readily than Germans did, really.

I founded Atari in my garage in Santa Clara while at Stanford. When I was in school, I took a lot of business classes. I was really fascinated by economics. You end up having to be a marketeer, finance maven and a little bit of a technologist in order to get a business going.

After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.

I had a really traumatizing experience growing up. When I was, like, 10 or 11, I was vegan. I'm not anymore, but I was, and I went to this hot dog place because I heard they had a veggie dog. I took a bite, and literally - I kid you not - it was a carrot in a bun. Horrifying.

I have lived with passion and in a hurry, trying to accomplish too many things. I never had time to think about my beliefs until my 28-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year, and I took care of her at home until she died in my arms in December of 1992.

I was tired of getting last or fifth or sixth. I was tired of falling multiple times in a program. I was tired of competing differently than how I trained. If I was going to do that, why train so hard? I took a step back, and I figured out what I wanted to change about myself.

There were open source projects and free software before Linux was there. Linux in many ways is one of the more visible and one of the bigger technical projects in this area, and it changed how people looked at it because Linux took both the practical and ideological approach.

I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.

I was born Joseph Lane, but when I applied to the actors union, they said they already had a Joe Lane on the books and I'd have to change my last or first name. I had played the character of Nathan Detroit, whom I liked very much, in 'Guys and Dolls,' so I took the name Nathan.

If I wrote in Jacob Riis' time, I'd be writing about teeming slums in our cities and kids dying of tuberculosis or outhouses in Philadelphia or kids losing their toes because they were living in homes without heat. He took on a battle in 'The Battle with the Slums' - and we won.

Berta Caceres, a Lenca woman, grew up during the violence that swept through Central America in the 1980s. Her mother, a midwife and social activist, took in and cared for refugees from El Salvador, teaching her young children the value of standing up for disenfranchised people.

Until I was about 13, somehow I managed to assume that everyone reacted to everything just about as I did. I took it for granted that everyone shared my passion for overcast skies. It came as quite a shock when I discovered that there were actually people who preferred sunshine.

Life has took me on a journey, and through much of that journey, I didn't feel whole, connected, and grounded. So as a kid, everyone called me Sue. My daddy called me Susie Q. But through this journey, I've sort of risen to a place that I get this level of respect of Ms. Burton.

I'm riding my man Obama. I think he's a visionary. Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was 'Do the Right Thing.' I said, Thank God I made it. Otherwise you would have taken her to 'Soul Man.' Michelle would have been like 'What's wrong with this brother?'

I made 'Prozac Nation' necessary reading because I write necessarily. I tell my story because it is about everyone else: in 1993, people took pills to relieve the pain just like they do now, but it scared them; it doesn't any more, because talk is not cheap at all - it is tender.

My youngest brother and I went on a ten-day canoe trip in Bowron Provincial Park in British Columbia years ago. Believe it or not, we took only granola, thinking we'd be eating a lot of lake trout. Well, we neglected to bring along a net, and our fishing line was only 8-lb. test.

I didn't come over with a comfy sponsor that took care of my visa and paid me a good amount of money right away. I came over here with nothing, the little bit of money that I had saved up, and it was struggle and plight to get some recognition and then finally make it to the WWE.

'The Immigrant Story,' which took me about twenty-five years to write, was a very simple story, but I couldn't think of how to tell it. Then twenty years after I started it, I found this one page and realized it was going to be the story. That's the only way you get it sometimes.

I took a job at a factory in New Jersey to try to save money to go to Europe. When I took the job, I set a date for quitting. I was going to hitchhike around, be a hippie, see the world. I just wanted to be responsible long enough to get up the money to get there and trip around.

Of course, when I joined the Navy and when I took up the correspondence course in cryptography, I had to sign an oath that I would never reveal what sort of work I was involved in. It was only some years after the war that Congress passed a statute relieving me of that obligation.

Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college.

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