Prior to being mugged I did not feel I had to carry a gun. However, I knew how to shoot a gun very proficiently. As a boy, I used to play cowboys and Indians all the time.
During my jury selection process, we went through over 360 jurors. It took six months, all New York residents. Of the 360 jurors, over half of them had been mugged one time. Quite a number of them, maybe 30 40, 50, had been mugged twice.
It is my contention that most people are not mugged every day, that most people in this world do not encounter violence every day. I think we prepare people for violence, and I think just as importantly we prepare people for the definition of being gentle.
The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home.
For a while, many years ago, my job was to get mugged. My job was to walk around Times Square trying to get a mugger to attack me so that someone else could come in and arrest the mugger.
While I was in 'Inadmissible Evidence' at the Donmar, I was mugged at the HSBC ATM on Shaftesbury Avenue. I grabbed one of the men, and when the police arrived, they put both me and him against a wall until they worked out which of us was the criminal.
It is one of the truisms of politics that a conservative is often enough a former liberal who has been 'mugged by reality.'
A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before.
I was mugged when I was 12. I had a portable radio, and I ran into this building and these two guys came in and hit me, busted me up and took the radio. After that I was very paranoid and I started taking kung fu and karate. But I didn't want to fight.
It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
