There's an old saying: 'No piece of writing is ever finished, it's just abandoned.' But my own rule is: No piece of work is done until you want to kill everyone involved in the publishing process, especially yourself.
I was a big light heavyweight but I feel perfect at heavyweight. When I look back at some of my old fights, I was really just a shell of myself. Now I'm healthy and strong and ready to get to the top.
When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations.
I recently did a piece for the Boston Pops and John Williams, and I hope that it's as well a composed piece as I've ever done for any other medium or occasion.
Getting old is the most the beautiful thing. I can't wait until I'm 60, to be honest, reading the newspaper. I don't know what I am going to do. I'll probably keep on being a novelist and maybe some theater piece, some dance piece, some music for films. It's exciting to grow.
I've never, ever done a piece of work - and can't imagine doing a piece of work - when I've thought, 'I was pretty perfect in that.'
When I went to college at the University of Nevada back in Las Vegas, I got tricked into singing in choir. The first thing we did was the Mozart 'Requiem.' That was the piece that changed my life overnight.
After I knock out Randy Couture, I'll fight for the heavyweight title, the real heavyweight boxing title in October or November, come back and fight in the UFC in January or February. It doesn't matter, I'm a two sport athlete. The oldest man to ever do that.
It's really great to do one piece, "I've Grown Accustomed To Your Face," my dad developed in 1956, when he was 20 years old, and it's great to do that piece again now and see that it still really works as well as it ever did.
Creating a piece of software is always complicated because you're doing something new. If you just wanted something that had been done before you'd just use that old piece of software. So there are no repetitive tasks.
Nothing has ever gotten in my way. They say, 'Wally, you're a girl, you can't do that.' I said, 'Guess what, doesn't matter what you are, you can still do it if you want to do it,' and I like to do things that nobody's ever done before.
The only time I ever appeared in the Enquirer was for a piece about people who let their hair grow gray. I guess I’m not much of a wild child.
The only time I ever appeared in the 'Enquirer' was for a piece about people who let their hair grow gray. I guess I'm not much of a wild child.
I guess my tendency is to think essentially that the new wrinkles won't do the job if the old major idea didn't, and so you have to try something different. Then maybe they can all be combined in some coherent piece.
I guess it could be said that the inspiration for 'Requiem for a Dream' is watching the American dream not only destroy so many lives in the U.S., but infect the rest of the world with its obsession with getting more, ignoring the deadly effect that has on the planet.
I didn't realize it at the time, but writing obituaries was one of best jobs that I've ever had. After all, it's the only time that someone will ever laminate my work and put it in their Bible. Plus, let's be honest, writing obits in Sarasota is a very busy job. The old saying was that old people lived in Miami, but their parents lived in Sarasota.