The Nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature.
As a boy, I once saw a cart of melons that sorely tempted me. I sneaked up to the cart and stole a melon. I went into the alley to devour it, but no sooner had I set my teeth into it, than I paused, a strange feeling coming over me. I came to a quick conclusion. Firmly, I walked up to that cart, replaced the melon - and took a ripe one.
It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?
We were good boys, good Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.
From high Meonia's rocky shores I came, Of poor decsent, Acoetes is my name, My sire was measly born: no oxen ploughed, His fruitful fields, nor in his pastures lowed, His whole estate within the waters lay' With lines and hooks he caught the finny prey; His art was all his livelehood, which he Thus with his dying lips bequeathed to me: In streams, my boy, and rivers take thy chance; There swims', said he, Thy whole inheritance.
The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important 'cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
There's, like, marks next to an actor's name or something, and boy does that go up and down! Somewhere in there, which always causes my mate Miss Ruby Wax great hilarity, I was offered a biopic of Frank Sinatra. Even I knew that was a bad idea! They'll throw anything at you at certain times. So, you know, to thine own self be true.
I was a student in London in the '70s, so CBGB really wasn't on my radar at all. Obviously, I was aware of the emergence of the Police in England and as an art student, I was very aware of David Byrne, but I suppose my musical taste at that time certainly didn't stretch towards the Dead Boys or the Ramones.
When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you. . . . Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you. After being severely wounded two weeks before my nineteenth birthday I had a bad time until I figured out that nothing could happen to me that had not happened to all men before me. Whatever I had to do men had always done. If they had done it then I could do it too and the best thing was not to worry about it.
I always think back to the original movies and to those quieter moments where Luke is out in A New Hope, and there are the two suns setting. It is the equivalent, basically, of a farm boy dying to get out of his small town and do something bigger. It's those kinds of universal themes that ground this whole thing in space.