Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I just moved into a new house, so I love spending time at home. Everything for me is all about self-care because I really feel that if I'm at my best, than I'm able to come to my job and really be feeling the best, so if I'm not working out or going on a hike, than I'm at home recharging and cooking dinner and hanging out with my cat.
I used to delay doing stuff that I just didn't want to deal with - things like putting the garden hose away properly or doing the dishes right after dinner. Now I have this little voice in my head that says, 'I know you don't want to do this, but just do it anyway.' In other words, there's far less stuff that I put off until tomorrow.
Once you just tell yourself, 'OK, I'm going to have a breakdown right now, and I'm going to cry for an hour, put my phone away. I'm going to go swimming, and then I'm gonna make my family dinner and lay on the couch and watch 'Ru Paul's Drag Race,' once you accept that it's not the day and you can just have a breakdown, you're over it.
If you have multiples of anything, you have the possibility of repetition. Repetition creates pattern and also unity. Put anyone in a room with a pile of similar objects and say, 'I want a pattern by 3 P.M. or no dinner.' Anyone would come up with a design. It is easy, fun and available to anybody. Most people just don't have the nerve.
Oh yea, I was a conservative. I was probably hard-line, preoccupied with how much money I would make and how far I would go. But I began seeing a lady who directs a homeless clinic in Fargo. One of our first get-togethers was to a Salvation Army dinner, where I met some jobless Vietnam veterans. It started my transition, opened my eyes.
When I am at a dinner table, I love to ask everybody, 'How long do you think our species might last?' I've read that the average age of a species, of any species, is about two million years. Is it possible we can have an average life span as a species? And do you picture us two million years more or a million and a half years, or 5,000?
My grandmother used to cook for eight every day - sitting down lunches and dinner, the way you do it in Italy, you sit down. And when my parents could afford their own place, I went with them but still my mother used to work but used to come back from work to cook lunch for my father, come back from work, cook dinner for my father and me.
My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to have a Fender amp in his house and an electric guitar. I would spend hours making sounds.
I've had times when I've done what seems like a thousand interviews to promote a film that I'm in. I start to think that I'm the best thing that ever happened to the world, talkin' about myself for cryin' out loud. Then I come home, and my wife needs me to help with dinner and empty the garbage, and the kids need help with their homework.
Getting up quite late in the morning, going and trying to clean my bikes - I have quite a few of them in Ranchi - spending some time with my family, my parents and friends. Going out for rides with my friends and having lunch or dinner at a roadside hotel - that's my favourite time-pass. These are the sort of things that really excite me.
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.
The way my family always did Christmas was on Christmas Eve, it wasn't really centered around a dinner on Christmas Eve. It was more about keeping the kids calm. Sometime after dark is when we were going to open all the presents underneath the tree from Mom, Dad and the kids and everything - just the family presents was every Christmas Eve.
There are plenty of millionaires who would pay millions to hang a Van Gogh painting on the wall, but hardly one that would have ever had the crazy nut over for dinner. I feel like the big companies are like that with musicians. They'll say, 'We love music! It's all about the music!' - but if a musician shows up at the door, they call security.
One time at the University of Colorado, at a faculty dinner, this professor said to me, 'Well, my goodness, a boy from Appa-lay-chee-a with a Ph.D!' The dinner was in her house. And I said, 'My grandparents didn't have indoor plumbing, but they had more books in their house than you do.' I was a little insulted by the Appa-lay-chee-a business.
We FaceTime and Skype. My two older kids got iPods for their birthdays, so they can FaceTime their dad whenever they need him. They always get a six o'clock call right after dinner, and I make sure I talk to each child. Even my 1-year-old gets on the phone and says 'Daddy.' They know my schedule by now and count the days back until I get home.
I watched some serious '80s television. 'Alice,' 'Good Times,' 'The Jeffersons,' 'Family Ties,' 'Cheers'... every night it was eat dinner, watch 'Cheers.' I was actually on 'Jeopardy' with Rebecca Lobo and Dot Richardson, and we were laughing because I was just nailing every random '80s trivia question - sitcom, theme music, movie, you name it.
I've written in every imaginable location; a repurposed closet, the kitchen table, the bleachers while my kids had basketball practice, the front seat of the car when they were at soccer. In airports. On trains. In the break room when I was supposed to be wolfing down dinner. In the back of classrooms when I was supposed to be paying attention.
Navigating a nonsober world of restaurants and bars, dinner parties, and benefits is like anything that requires practice. Like tennis or a foreign language, it gets easier the more you do it. But like all beginnings, it can be awkward. You stumble, you worry, and then there are unexpected moments of grace that give you the courage to keep going.
It used to be the custom for the bachelor dinner to take place the night before the wedding. Now, however, the bridesmaids' and ushers' dinner is usually on that night, for a groom realizes that he and his attendants need some time in which to recover sufficiently to be able to distinguish the altar from the organ and walk up the aisle with no mishaps.
The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.
In the beginning, it was odd to have so much attention brought to my body type. I thought, "Uh-oh, brace yourself." But everyone has been so positive. During the first season, a woman came up to me at dinner and said, "I just want to thank you - watching you has made me proud of my body." I thought, What an amazing thing for someone to say! To make anyone feel good about themselves makes me feel good.
