If I were founding a university I would begin with a smoking room; next a dormitory; and then a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had more money that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some text books.
I have said all along that I would know when it would be time to step down and now is that time. I want to thank Temple University, its fans and community for allowing me to do what I love for so long. It has never been a job for me, but a passion.
I'm a very happy university professor... the best thing about being a university professor is that you see young people as they're being shaped and molded toward their own future, and you have a chance to be a part of that.
I would never have dreamt that I would live in this country and that we would see swastikas painted at the door of a psychology professor at Columbia University.
I wasn't meant to be a cook. It's a profession I accidentally fell into one summer between college semesters while looking for an easy job as a waiter. Nobody would hire me as a server, but one restaurant, in desperate need of a prep cook, told me that if I could hold a knife, I could have a job.
The tattoos on my legs started because they didn't let me get tattoos on my upper body at work. They would never clear me for anything.
Being a rock widow is not my job, so I would hire people to do it for me.
I have never had a plan. Things happen to me, and, of course, I make friends who later say, 'Hey, you know who would be good for this? McKean would be good for this.' And they hire me, and if they like me, they hire me again, or the word gets out.
The weirdest thing to me is that magazines would never do this for their writers. They would never hire a writer who writes for another magazine; they want to have their own stable of writers. Newsweek would never hire a TIME writer, and TIME would never hire a Newsweek writer - but they would both hire the same photographer to shoot a cover for them.
Today my passion is still black and white. Today if I have an array of cameras in front of me the one I would reach for that I would feel most comfortable with would be a 4 X 5 View camera. I was once working in a sort of soft light situation.
I didn't have a job because nobody would hire me. My friends were getting hired, and I couldn't even get a job interview. That really rocked my self-esteem because I didn't understand what I did wrong on those job applications.
What I would hope to do is painting, because I don't think I'm qualified for anything else. My last job would be babysitting, so I don't think Starbucks would even hire me.
If I could be useful to another human being, even for a day, that would be a great thing. It would be greater than all the big thoughts I could have at the university.
The irony is that [Barack] Obama was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He would, most of all, know that what he is doing weakens the Constitution.
I was a mere 29-year-old instructor at Kyoto, enjoying daily research work with some young students. Nothing had prepared me to be a professor at a major national university. Being too young and inexperienced to be a Full Professor, I was first appointed Associate Professor of Chemistry.
I would say probably not being able to do what I want to do and not being completely fulfilled and happy. I don't know how that would manifest itself in a mirror. It's just that feeling of not being satisfied with my life would be the worst thing that could ever happen to me.