Other people's traditions look charming and decorative and exotic. They're nice places to visit on holiday, but you wouldn't want to live with one.
It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.
I'm Muslim the way many of my Jewish friends are Jewish: I avoid pork, and I take the big holidays off.
No one can complain about earning good money, but for me, it's being able to help my family out, put my brother and sister through school, take my family on holiday. That's where I get the biggest buzz, not buying a pair of £500 shoes.
I loved Billie Holiday more than any other person other than myself on the stage. Yeah, I do.
I'm from Philadelphia, and I go to Philly a bunch throughout the holidays, which is my only time to see my family, so we get pretty festive around that time of year. It's also the only time I have vacation.
I drew a lot. I always had sketchbooks. My parents were really great about any gift-giving holiday - birthdays, Hanukkah, Christmas - it was always art supplies for my brother and I.
Valentine's Day itself, like most holidays in the modern era, has been heavily influenced by commercialism that focuses on the appeal of romantic fantasies.
I had a huge interior world as a kid: I'd sit on endless wet holidays in Cornwall playing with paper dolls.
A holiday is when you celebrate something that's all finished up, that happened a long time ago and now there's nothing left to celebrate but the dead.
