My living room has an oak-wood floor, Persian carpets, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a large ficus and large fern, a fireplace with a group of photographs and drawings over it, a glass-top coffee table with a bowl of dried pomegranates on it, and sofas and chairs covered in off-white linen.
We didn't have a backyard, so as I child, I would turn the coffee table into a stage and put on shows. But it was just a fun thing to do; I never thought about it as a profession. That started as a fluke; my mother had a friend who was an artist with a theater company, and I started going there after school because my mom knew I'd be safe.
My mom decided that she wanted to put the mirror ball trophy on the coffee table in the center of our living room. When people walk in, it's kind of like, 'Uh.' It's a little weird. Maybe we should put it in the corner or something.
I am not by any stretch of the imagination a tidy person, and the piles of unread books on the coffee table and by my bed have a plaintive, pleading quality to me - 'Read me, please!'
There were always plenty of newspapers in the house. 'The Times', 'Guardian', 'Daily Telegraph' and 'Daily Mail' were all regular fixtures on the coffee table. I used to enjoy reading 'The Times' editorial pages and the 'Daily Mail' sports pages.
If you watch a fly on, say, a coffee table, you'll see that they're rubbing their little legs together to groom themselves; they're actually quite clean creatures.
One of my problems is I am getting so mature that I have to pick up a TV and toss it through the coffee table just to remind people of who I am. I want to go ranting and screaming into the grave.
I'm always working on a few different stories at once, so there's always some really big coffee table book I'm carrying around.
My wife made me a book of photographs she took of our road trip across the United States. Makes for a good coffee table book.
I'm really nervous about coming off as exclusive or elitist. At the same time, I recognize that when I put out vinyl or an expensive coffee table book not everyone can afford it or listen to it.
