England in the late 1940s was famously grim. As I remember it, London back then was a very dirty place, from coal dust and smoke, from the grit stirred up every day by the jackhammers still clearing out rubble from the Blitz.
One cannot rule out a blizzard in Minnesota after Labor Day, and so when I travel for Thanksgiving or any time in the fall, I am careful to fly into Des Moines instead of Minneapolis and then drive the 200 miles north to my hometown.
We spent a few days up Ben Nevis, which is the biggest mountain in the U.K., and there was one day when we had to make a decision whether we were going to go to the summit or not. It was already getting dark, but we made the call to go and made the summit, but as soon as we got there, this blizzard just hit.
I think of John every day. I do try to block it, but December 8th is not the only day I think of him.
At the end of the day, when I kick back with some barbecue and a CokeZero in front of a blockbuster film playing within the convenience of my fully air-conditioned house, I'll say a small prayer thanking God for the American culture.
There were probably about five games in my career where everything was moving in slow motion and you could be out there all day, totally in the zone, and you don't even know where you are on the field, everything is just totally blocked out.
I think the Internet was invented specifically to stop people finishing their books. And it does quite a good job. I don't have blocking software, though I could easily imagine needing it. I just don't do that stuff until I've got the words done for the day.
One day, right after my mastectomy, I went for a walk in Central Park, and there was this mob of people blocking the road. I thought, 'Oh, great, now I'm stuck!' but then I suddenly realized that it was a breast cancer walk.
A bridge shouldn't just fall down in the middle of America. Not a bridge that's a few blocks from my house. Not an eight-lane highway. Not a bridge that I drive over with my family every day, along with tens of thousands of Minnesotans. But that's what happened.
I talk to my fan club members, and I blog, and they know what's going on. But as far as Twitter, I'll be in a restaurant, and I'll get home, and somebody tweeted, and they talked about what I ordered and what I was wearing. In some cases, that could be dangerous, because you don't want everybody to know where you are every second of every day.
As long as we are persistence in our pursuit of our deepest destiny, we will continue to grow. We cannot choose the day or time when we will fully bloom. It happens in its own time.
I draw flowers every day and send them to my friends so they get fresh blooms every morning.
Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with Give us pasta with a hundred fillings.
In Israel, there's a lot to learn from anyone, because to live there you've got to deal with the truth. Things happen real fast. Your day goes from cool to catastrophic in one second. Israelis know that the cafe you're in could blow up, or the shopping mall, and they rock that.
I know I'm going to blow one day. My life is doomed the way it is. I have no future.
Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.
Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.
I've been in Iraq, and it never occurred to me to go, 'Hey, this war is bogus,' to some guy who's 24 hours a day trying not to get shot at or blown up.
Everyone should have their mind blown once a day.
I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.
