Whoever has the power to label others as evil is automatically, or reflexively, the good person. Good people label bad people as evil. And once you do that, then it demonizes them. You don't negotiate with evil. You don't sit down at the table with the devil and say, "Okay, let's work this out. " What you want to do is destroy evil. Every Catholic kid every night says, or should say, "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil. " And so you've got to go to God to help you deal with evil rather than your State Department or your negotiators.
A third of our kids, after we spend more per student than any country in the world other than a couple rounding errors, 30 percent are college- andor career-ready.
Hundreds of thousands of kids now have a chance to be adopted because I worked to change our adoption and foster care system.
I was voted best-looking kid in high school but, as you can see, things changed. I used to say I was a 260 pound Woody Allen. You can make that 295 pound now.
I see in my friends that don't have kids, when they come over, and the amount of times our conversation gets interrupted by my children. It's almost jarring.
I don't know what would be antithetical to do on the other side, maybe a Tyler Perry movie or something. No, there are very few comedies that live in between that. Or you're doing some kid thing like a Jim Carrey movie with animated something that's like that. Yeah, I've wanted to do them. I like doing them. I did Talk to Me. That was pretty much a comedy.
I read The Stinky Cheese Man as an adult. I missed that book when I was a kid. I grew up mostly with books bought at yard sales, picture books from the fifties to 1975, which is really a lucky thing.
In a way, education by its nature favours the extrovert because you are taking kids and putting them into a big classroom, which is automatically going to be a high-stimulation environment. Probably the best way of teaching in general is one on one, but that's not something everyone can afford.
I went to my old school, where all the kids I'd been with for eight years were about to graduate. But the sisters wanted me to repeat the whole term; so I went to the principal and pleaded with her to allow me to graduate with my class. She finally agreed on the condition that I write the graduation play. It was called How Do You Spend Your Leisure Time?Catchy title, huh?
Love is having endless support from my husband and the hugs and kisses from my kids.
When I had kids I sort of went into a hole for a few years and I think when I came out of that, I started to really become myself and know what works on me.
I was always trying to perform, but never with some dream to be on the stage. The stage was wherever I was standing at the time. I was lucky that the department of education in Sydney had a program where you could try out for these ensembles - kind of like extra-curricular sports, but for little drama kids. I got into that system, and it took me right through high school.
I've always felt a connection to kids who go to church. I think I'm fundamentally a religiously oriented and religiously minded person. It's very easy for me to communicate with people who have that same grounding, that same vocabulary or modality of thinking and expressing themselves.
A kid that picks up a record, he doesn't need to know anything other than the music and have it in his or her headphones. They're getting ideas directly, it's like someone whispering in their ear. That's such a personal way to receive information.
That was when I cut my arms with a razor blade as a means of creative expression. I only did it lightly, just grazing the skin, to see the way the blood would bleed out, to make myself look tougher. Not like some of those kids who keep going deeper and deeper, wondering what they look like down to the bone, because it's a world that's so close and yet so far and so dangerous and so much their own. The only world that is their own.
Me? I see an old, broke-ass black guy taking care of a bunch of kids, living life, taking them to school, and all that stuff, who's asking himself: What the hell is this? But I wouldn't give it up for the world because I love my wife. I never expected to have a life like this. No chaos. . . no confusion. . . no lawsuits. . . no violence. . . no going to jail.
No one thinks that young adults read hooks for YOUNG ADULTS, books for young adults are read by kids.
I've got a feeling, you know, that pensioners talk in a very different way when their kids and grandkids, aren't around.
We went to church every Sunday. When I was a kid, the only time I sang was around my family.
I think about music in the way that I heard music as a kid - like, Oh my god, there's this weird rubbery ball of undulating things.