I remember very vividly - I wrote about it in one of my books - my first IRA. I contributed $2,000 every year, and in 21 years, the funds in that IRA account grew to $260,000. Seems like sort of a miracle, but it happened.
Acting has made me embrace my childhood. It's become some weird form of therapy. It's like I have a place where I can release all of these emotions. When I was playing Ira Hayes, I didn't have to think about the death of my parents directly. It's just there. I can blend it into Ira's character. I can use Ira's emotions as an outlet.
The air in a man's lungs 10,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 atoms, so that sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has ever lived - Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses.
I never talk about shooting anybody, but I do acknowledge I was a member of the IRA, and as a member of the IRA, I obviously engaged in fighting back against the British army.
One by one, all of my college buddies had taken these nothing-special entry-level jobs, pushing papers for $18,000 or $21,000 a year (and hating the work besides), and I'd turn up my nose and tell them I wasn't about to get out of bed for anything less than $50,000. That was my line, my attitude.
When I went to the all-Ireland final - Kerry against Dublin - I couldn't get away for an hour and a half with people coming up and wishing me all the best. Not one of them said, 'Martin, when did you leave the IRA?' But every one of them knew I was in the IRA at one stage.
I first visited the Toronto fest in 1979, its fourth edition, when it was known as the Festival of Festivals and had an audience of about 40,000. I happily returned to the 10-day skein nearly every year thereafter, as attendance swelled to 400,000 and it grew into the most influential film festival in North America, perhaps the world.
I have 7,000 DVDs and Blu-rays. I have thousands of books - thousands - and roughly 15,000 comic books or something like that, hundreds of books about different art movements - the symbolists, the dadaists, the Pre-Raphaelites, the impressionists - you know, that I consult before I start every movie.
I was proud to be a member of the IRA. I am still 40 years on proud that I was a member of the IRA. I am not going to be a hypocrite and sit here and say something different.
Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.
We've created over 200,000 jobs every month this year. Hasn't happened in 17 years. I guess my first question is, when do the Republicans stop calling it 'Obama's economy'?
Freedom can be gained only at the point of an IRA rifle, and I apologize to no one for saying that we support the freedom fighters of the IRA.
When I hear that there are 5,000,000 working women in this country, I always take occasion to say that there are 18,000,000 but only 5,000,000 receive their wages.
I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.
If the US Government was a family—they would be making $58,000 a year, spending $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand.
The earth's history over the past several million years is that for every 100,000 years, we go through a dramatic climatic cycle where we get 90,000 years of ice age and 10,000 years of a warm period. I think people today just have the expectation that we deserve a perfectly benign climate forever.
When I think about the books I've written, it probably takes 150,000-200,000 words to get a 50,000 page book. Highlighting something and hitting Cmd-X is second nature.