In fact, Russell Crowe once phoned me up to see if I wanted to go to a party but I had to bring my guitar and perform 'Oh Jean.'
In school, I could hear the leaves rustle and go on a journey.
Being an actor is lot like being a dancer: you always have to go back to the bar and either work or take classes. Otherwise, you'll get rusty.
In the 'Revelation Space' books, the spaceships are a bit old and rusty, and things go wrong, and they don't work quite how they're meant to. And people asked why I did it this way, and groping around for an explanation, I said that I grew up in Barry, this post-industrial sea town full of rusting infrastructure.
Now I can go back to being ruthless again.
At the end of the day, when you go on to Google everything is about the way you were sacked when you were in charge of Australia. It doesn't mention the good things I did with South Africa or the good things I did in my first year with Australia when I brought in a lot of young players and gave them opportunities and tried to build a team.
I appreciate everything that happened in Sacramento. It was character building for me, continuing to go out and play hard. I feel like I progressed as a player.
In the priesthood we share the sacred duty to labor for the souls of men. We must do more than learn that this is our duty. It must go down into our hearts so deeply that neither the many demands on our efforts in the bloom of life nor the trials that come with age can turn us from that purpose.
The sad fact is, because we've had a failed policy and failed leadership, now we're having to rely on Russians and the Iranians to go into Syria to fight and destroy ISIS.
I've traveled around the country and I read local newspapers and all of that, and it's a sad, sad thing to go from city to city and see the small newspapers and they're tiny. They're tiny not only in size but also in scope.
The whole romanticized 'sad clown' thing, we gotta get rid of that. That has to go! That's just getting sick people to voluntarily stay sicker and sadder than they have to be.
I don't know if it's a sadistic side or whatever, but you take characters and put them in really awful situations and make them go through that. And it's very satisfying as a director to explore that, to tell those stories and to explore those themes, because it is so human.
I feel like it's improving a little bit as we go on, but I've never been to Lilith Fair. It always seemed so cool that it was started by women, for women, and it was a safe place to go and hear all of your favorite female acts in one space.
If you're going to be that kind of actor and go way out there, it's really important to take care of yourself and have a safe place, whatever that is.
Rooting for the offense is the safe way to go. You win either way.
You will go most safely in the middle.
If you look at the geographic variation in long-term unemployment, it's really striking. There are pockets where employers don't want to go, but for some reason, in part because of adequate safety nets, people don't want to leave.
One ship drives east and other drives west by the same winds that blow. It's the set of the sails and not the gales that determines the way they go.
You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative.
If you're Irish, it doesn't matter where you go - you'll find family.
