I pretty much immediately ran away from university to be an actor.
On my Wikipedia page, it used to say I was born in Belfast, Ireland, then it said Belfast, Northern Ireland, and then it said Belfast, U.K. So there was a little war going on about where Belfast is located.
I ran away from home. I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States of America, because of that terror of discrimination, that horrible beast which paralyzes one's very soul and body.
If I had stayed in Belfast, my life there wouldn't have as easy as it was in Scotland. I see the strain on the people who stayed. Always worrying about the safety of their children.
I really try to ask myself the question of nine. Will this matter in nine minutes, nine hours, nine days, nine weeks, nine months or nine years? If it will truly matter for all of those, pay attention to it.
I ran through most of college and ran through most of grad school. When I was writing my dissertation for my Ph.D., it was literally the only hour of the day that I wasn't working. It was nine months of torture, but I made sure I got out to run.
I ran track in high school very competitively, and then ran it D-1 at Boston University. I ran there on an athletic scholarship and chose BU because they had both a good track program and an arts program.
I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.
I think the poetry that came out of Belfast, and especially the Queen's University set, in the 1970s and '80s - you know, Paul Muldoon and Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Ciaran Carson - that was probably the finest body of work since the Gaelic renaissance, up there with the work of Yeats and Synge and Lady Gregory.
When I was in grad school, I wrote one early story that was Vegas, and then I stayed away from it. I was trying to expand and do different things. I knew I would write about it, but I stayed away for as long as I could.
I was, like, talking to these kids, and I look up, and there was, like, 25 cameras around me. And I ran. I ran away. I, like, straight up ran away, and I was so scared, and then, like, it happened, and after I was done, it kinda sunk in.
The government simply waits for farmers to grow their crops - nine months of growing grapes, then two to three weeks of drying them in the sun. Then it takes away a part of that crop and stores it in warehouses around California.
If I'd made it right away as an actor, I would've stopped at a certain level and stayed there, probably as a character actor.
Women have nine months more experience than you do - nine months to prepare for being a parent.
I entered the University of Natal as a preliminary-year student in 1966 and stayed on to June 1972, when I was expelled from the university. I was then doing third-year medicine.
Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.