Dick Cheney and Bush's rise to power were built on tons of money from corporations and a dulled press.
When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.
Even when every Tom, Dick and Harry was calling for my head, I still felt I could get better at being captain.
It was easy to believe, between lessons on Shakespeare and Dickens and Austen, that all of the great stories had already been written by dead Europeans. But every time I saw 'The Outsiders', I knew better. It was the first time I'd realized that real people write books.
Poetry. I read Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Hirschfield. I like to read Billy Collins out loud.
An adaptation I was working on of Trollope's 'The Pallisers' has been axed by the BBC... I was also going to do Dickens' 'Dombey and Son' but they've asked me to do 'David Copperfield' instead.
Taking the humour out of Dickens, it's not Dickens any more.
No, I don't know any Emily Dickinson poems!
Many books have mattered enormously to my life and work. 'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens would be one of several contenders for 'most influential.' I first read it at 13 and have reread it dozens of times since.
When Dick Avedon died, I was so upset that I just started painting.
