For the two hours I climb on stage, I become the schoolboy. But as soon as it is over, I get off stage and go home and get told to wipe my feet before I come in.
My 'act' was schoolwork. I was your basic, garden-variety, ambitious, upwardly mobile, hard-working Jewish boy from Brooklyn. I was bound to go beyond my parents. It was simply the way things were.
Science fiction writers create all sorts of futures - that comes with the job. But it's not the type that matters - hopeful or dark - it's the variety we see as readers. It's nurturing the imaginations of those who will go on to create the world around us.
The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.
What keeps me up at night? Waking up to a scoop at another newspaper or on TV. I'm probably competitive, almost too much so. I will stay up till the Web sites at night roll over. And if they don't roll over, I'll stay up until it's done. I'll wake up at the crack of dawn, or in the middle of the night even, just to go and check and see.
When I know I'm not doing any auditions, I go to the skate park on my scooter or my bike.
What makes me a selfish player? Because I shoot the ball? I'm supposed to shoot the ball. That's how you score points. Those points go on the scoreboard for the whole team.
Whoever I'm playing against, I go in and try to stop their best scorer and try to get myself going on the offensive end.
There's a lot of things that go into scoring touchdowns and leading your team. It's not just the game itself, but going back and studying tape to pick apart everything I did. It's nice to have something to go on, doing it full speed in a game situation.
I'm William Wallace, and the rest of you will be spared. Go back to England and tell them... Scotland is free!
If the beat feels like it don't make you move right, I scrap that and go to another track. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes, sometimes it takes an hour to get one done.
I've driven cars worth $6 million and now I'm not as nervous because I do it a lot, but I have to keep my wits about me because if I touch anything or scrape one rim, anything could go wrong.
It's always been my weakness that my concentration tends to go when I get into scrappy frames.
Humans are very aggressive and scrappy, and go to war at the drop of a hat. However, a standard land war is no longer going to work as it is no longer technically possible.
When there were no kids to play football with in my local park, I would go to my grandma's factory. She used to give me £2 if I cleaned all the threads and scraps off the floor. I even learned how to sew.
Journalists often ask me when I go to the field, 'What do you expect to find?' And my answer always is, 'The unexpected,' because we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg; we've just scratched the surface.
I'm not going to go to the local theater to spend $12... when I can get a screening copy of a film. I don't get screeners myself, but I can borrow from my friends or go to their house to watch.
I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When I've told a story, I want to tell another story.
It's rare that I read a script, and I immediately go, 'This is perfect. I can see myself in this.'
If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar.
