When I was at Hinckley I was on £200 a week. I was flying around getting myself into trouble here and there. It was a learning curve, relying on money that wasn't coming and having to survive.
Joining 'ER,' I felt like that kid who got the golden ticket in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' I've been offered chocolate bars all these years, but there had been no golden ticket. Just the stomachache that was called 'Jake in Progress.'
Tuppence was what my grandmother nicknamed my mother, so she gave it to me. My sister is called Angel, and my brother was going to be called Bubba or Sonny, until they let me and my sister name him Josh.
Long ago Apollo called to Aristæus, youngest of the shepherds, Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees." Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey; golden, too, the music, Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees.
They were very short, the golden years. The golden years are when you can sit back, hopefully, and exchange memories. And that's the worst part about this disease. There's nobody to exchange memories with.
For me, learning is a continuous process and an all-inclusive one - reading a book, learning a musical instrument or learning the martial art called taekwondo. Teach myself something new - that's my prayer.
But however you might rebel, there was no shedding them. They were your responsibility and there was no one to relieve you of them. They called you Sis. All your life people called you Sis, because that was what you were, or what you became - big sister, helpful sister, the one upon whom everyone depended, the one they all came to for everything from help with homework to a sliver under the fingernail.
The press is largely directed at white society or the so-called electorate whose values are laced with racial prejudice against black people.
I'm the youngest of three children and grew up in Ealing, west London. My eldest sister, Nutun, is nine years older than me, and my middle sister, Rupa, is three years older.
I remember when I was writing 'The Tin Drum,' I had the totally misguided idea of giving Oskar Matzerath a sister, and he just wouldn't have it. There was no space for a sister, yet I had the character of the sister in my head. In fact I used her in later novels, in 'Cat and Mouse' and 'Dog Years,' Tulla Pokriski.
Don't let your learning lead to knowledge. Let your learning lead to action.
My sister, I have a sister who's 12 years older, she was always the party girl, the outrageous one.
Spend the years of learning squandering Courage for the years of wandering Through a world politely turning From the loutishness of learning.
What I discovered is I don't like to repeat lead characters because one of the most pleasurable things in a book to me is learning about the lead.
I'm unabashedly obsessed with 'The Golden Girls,' and I have been for many years. And I consider myself to be a priest in the church of 'The Golden Girls.'
Too often what are called "educated" people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.