I had a very tough childhood. I came here from Italy in the '70s and didn't speak a word of English, so the kids at school tormented me. Truly, it was horrifying the names they called me, and the teachers never really did a thing to stop it.
I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.
I was from a tiny little island, which I always say is one corn field away from a horror film: it was, like, isolated, and everybody knew everybody, and you go to school with the grandkids of the grandparents that your grandparents went to school with.
When I was 12, we began hosting exchange students from Norway, Sweden, Japan and Spain. I soon realized there was a whole world out there. I was determined to spend my sophomore year in high school abroad. My school taught only Spanish, but I wanted to go to France, and I did.
I went to school with Steven Wright, who was the shyest guy I knew, and one day someone suddenly told me that he was in a club doing standup comedy. I went down to his club and he was great. Another friend of mine, who was pretty much a thief by trade, was hosting the show. So I thought, 'If these guys can do it, then so can I.'
No one has the Houdini school of composition.
When the financial system works as it should, money and capital flow to and from households and businesses to pay for home loans, school loans, and investments to create jobs.
She was just Ma, and I didn't grow up in some kind of acting dynasty: Orson Welles didn't come round and give me a piggyback; Vivien Leigh never read me a bedtime story. It was just my mum and our housekeeper, whom I adored, and after that, it was boarding school.
I think my grandmother Woodrell was most responsible for my becoming a writer. She wasn't quite literate, but was very proud that she attended school as far as the third grade. She worked as a maid, housekeeper and cook.
Any one who chooses will set up for a literary critic, though he cannot tell us where he went to school, or how much time was spent in his education, and knows nothing about letters at all.
Public school teachers enjoy a huge amount of job security, thanks to their powerful unions and inflexible work rules.
I was seen dancing at school by a director, who asked me to be in a TV play. And it had a huge impact. So I think that's what really started me off.
Colombian culture has had a huge influence on me and taught me a different way of looking at things - I was always different from the people I went to school with, and I learned to embrace that.
My father is an amazing person. While he was a huge star, he never carried his stardom home and always remained simple and just our father at home. I have four siblings, and we were all very grounded. We lived a very simple life: would go in an auto rickshaw to school, played with normal boys.
I do live a very Hugh Beaumont existence. I'm up every morning, taking my kids to school and all that, which obviously does interest me. But then it's taking meetings with goofballs and auditioning for crap, and then I spend a lot of time on the road.
I have a save file in 'Final Fantasy XII' that is 125 hours long. I have gotten into legitimate arguments over the rules governing the tapping of mana in 'Magic: The Gathering.' I don't like hugs or parties, high school sucked for me, and Nathan Fillion deemed something I wrote his 'Favorite 'Firefly' fanboy rant to date.'
When I was 10 years old, a cousin of mine took me on a tour of his medical school. And as a special treat, he took me to the pathology lab and took a real human brain out of the jar and placed it in my hands. And there it was, the seat of human consciousness, the powerhouse of the human body, sitting in my hands.
The senseless killing of 20 children and their teachers and principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School was not part of God's grand plan. It was a thwarting of God's plan. It was the misuse of human freedom.
I remember from my school days Archimedes jumping into his bath and displacing water and coming up with his famous principle, and of course Isaac Newton being hit on the head with an apple. In other words, this realm of human knowledge - which is mathematical, essentially - can have a playful visual element to it.
I was never very good at school with... humanities... anything which was more a matter of opinion.
