People have these weird ideas about artists being romantic, generous people, and sometimes I feel like an asshole, a selfish kid, a brat, the lucky one, because I get to do this and it's how I make my living.
Some kids spent their allowance going to see 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'; I spent mine on a great-looking lamp I'd found at the flea market and a ceramic bowl from a neighborhood garage sale.
I made my parents crazy. As a kid, I redecorated my bedroom every month. I would literally save my allowance and go buy things.
I was a tomboy right from the time I was a kid and loved to be like that. I'd hate all the girlie things. Well my best friends as a kid have been boys. I get along best with the opposite sex. I guess that's the case with most people though!
My kids always say to me, 'Can we watch TV?' I say, 'Absolutely!' because then I can get something done. But then they say, and I wait for it, 'But can you watch with us?' My moment of freedom vanishes. So not only do I not think TV's that great and I hate sitting in front of it, but I have to with them.
I think I'm a better mother because of work, because I'm happy. If I wasn't working, I would just be waiting for the kids to come home every day, and living vicariously through their lives.
When I sent out a casual and nonscientific poll of my own to a wide cast of acquaintances, friends and colleagues, I was surprised, but not really, to learn that maybe 60 percent claimed a belief in a God of some sort, including people I would have bet were unregenerate skeptics. Others just shrugged. They don't think about this stuff. It doesn't matter to them. They can't know, they won't beat themselves up trying to know and for that matter they don't care if their kids believe or not.
A lot of times you'll do a movie, and you'll be working with adults with families and kids and stuff. There's a level - you guys aren't going to be hanging out every second, you know?
'Holes' was my favorite book ever. So you know when you love a book and you hear it's being made into a movie and it makes you a little annoyed at first? But I would've loved to play the Shia LaBeouf role in that movie when I was younger. I just wanted to be the rebellious kid on the old digging camp.
I think at least two of [my kids] - and I'm - I better not speak them by name because I'm not sure where they are these days, but at least two of them believe in some kind of higher force. The - another is an atheist and the other is still pondering.
[Cardinal John O'Connor] had [my wife] Margot and me over for drinks a couple of times. That was something I never could have envisioned back when I was a kid in Boston, that a cardinal and I would be, if not breaking bread, at least breaking Scotch.
[Miranda Hentoff] was teaching once at Lincoln Center, and the hall was full of other professionals - musicians, professors, teachers. And she was explaining how [Béla] Bartok composed his second piano concerto. And she explained how the music was interwoven with the rhythms and what he had in his mind. And I was just stunned. This is a kid who used to work - on a piano with a cracked keyboard.
Bob Dylan was really mad with my wife. I had asked by Rolling Stone - the only assignment I ever had for them - to do a story on the Rolling Thunder Review, which was Bob Dylan, Alan Ginsberg, Joan Baez and a host of stars. My wife, some weeks before, had written in The New York Times that The Kid wasn't The Kid anymore and he wasn't all that winning anymore.
When I was a kid in Boston, it was one of the most anti-Semitic cities in the country. If you were living in the ghetto as I was, the Jewish ghetto part of Roxbury, and you went out alone at night, you might be subject to having people attacking you for being a Christ killer.
This sounds corny, but I once told a kid when I was in a the library conference, the best - not the best, what I really hope for is that someday 20, 30 years from now, some kid, 12-year-old, 15-year-old, in Des Moines will be going through the stacks, if they have stacks anymore - they probably won't - and find a book of mine and get something from it.
Kids are the biggest brand ambassadors of Swachh Bharat initiative.
White people couldn't do black music back in the day because they weren't funky or bad enough. They weren't from the ghettoes, but hip-hop and R&B changed all of that because white kids want to be down with it. They wanted to learn it so they studied the culture. It's kind of a cool thing because we shouldn't be so separate.
Kids should be naughty and go through that rebellious phase I didn't have.
Your father leaving your family, that's your bedrock for all your future relationships and that's your security when you're a kid.
I really enjoy doing sitcom television. It allows me to stay in Los Angeles and spend more time with my husband and kids.
Kids love to look at pictures of themselves.
We play tag and kickball almost every day. It's one of the ways that I've figured out how to spend some fun quality time with my kids while getting exercise.
Family photo albums are so powerful in that they make kids feel valued, cherished and respected.
The parents in the room know that texting is actually the best way to communicate with your kids. It might be the only way to communicate with your kids.
Many think kids have lots of time and few responsibilities. And that's just not true. They are stressed and under pressure.
