I don't even think when I'm walking down the runway. I don't really breathe either.
The possibility of an Oscar is something I definitely think about and the fact that I can even say that is just a blessing. It's something I would be incredibly honored to be a part of.
Walking the runway with Alexander McQueen, I really had to dig deep. You're with Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. I was the first person out on the runway, but I thought, 'I have done the Olympics, I can do this.'
I think people get a sense of possibility when they're on a plane, even romantic possibility, wondering if the perfect person is going to sit down next to them or something.
I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I'm not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.
When I walk down the runway, my main goal is to not think about the people watching. The idea of all eyes on me would make me too uncomfortable. As I step on the runway, I take a deep breath, focus on a point in the distance, and go!
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.
As an African-American, we stand on the shoulders of people who fought despite not seeing victories in their lifetime or even in their children's lifetime or even in their grandchildren's lifetime. So fatalism isn't really an option.
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
What happens with fear is that probability doesn't matter very much. That is, once I have raised the possibility that something terrible can happen to your child, even though the possibility is remote, you may find it very difficult to think of anything else. Emotion becomes dominant.
I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.
I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.
I will say - and not to sound arrogant - people would have been upset if I failed my cash-in. Yeah, it would not have been a good move. I didn't really think that was going to happen, but you never know. It's always a possibility.
The only, the only possibility would be if the Republicans are in the majority and they can offer me something that would be especially advantageous to Maine. Somebody said, 'You may be a committee chair.' I don't think so. I don't think anybody would want me that much.
I think everybody has something that they've been obsessed about in their lifetime.
I'm going to be 80, walking with a stick down the runway.