One of the things I like about being a celebrity is that you can get away with murder. Not just metaphorically, literally. Remember that annoying blond dog reporter at E News used to talk smack about me? I paid two mobsters five million dollars each to throw her off the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas.
It's like a crapshoot in Las Vegas, except in Las Vegas the odds are with the house. As for the market, the odds are with you, because on average over the long run, the market has paid off.
I don't think I've gone a day in my life without being inspired by Celine Dion. If you would've seen me at her concert in Las Vegas - like, I'm surprised I didn't get kicked out. I was literally sitting at the edge of my seat like the happiest girl in the entire universe.
Many a man who goes to Las Vegas to get away from it all soon finds that Las Vegas gets it all away from him.
I remember, when I was 7, my dad found a pregnant dog on the railroad track one day and brought her home. So my mom explained about how this dog was married but that her husband had passed away - she didn't want me to even think that a dog could have babies without being married.
I go to Las Vegas--or at least I went to Las Vegas--because even though I knew everything that was sinister, calculating, and evil about it, I loved Las Vegas. Only in Vegas could I dare to fantasize that I was a Friend of Frank. Or that I was throwing the dice at Dino's favorite table. Or that I might luck out and sip bourbon with Rickles after his last lounge show. The D.I. oozed that kind of heady fantasy.
I think, it was like 30 million dollars the Libertarians talk about that it cost them to get on the ballot. We don't have 30 million dollars. We're a people powered campaign.
I don't want to be one of those people that complains about the rumours. I never like it when a celebrity goes on Twitter and says, "This isn't true!" It is what it is, I tend not to do that. The only time it gets really annoying is that if you get into a relationship and you get into a place where you really like someone and then things are being written in the papers that affect them and how they see you. Then it can get annoying.
I love roller coasters that make my stomach drop. One ride in Las Vegas, the Big Shot, straps you into a row of seats and catapults you into the air from the top of the Stratosphere Tower - then plummets back down. I ride it over and over; it's exhilarating.
The thing about making a documentary in Las Vegas is there isn't much to film apart from other people making documentaries about Las Vegas.
I remember being in my house from when I was, like, five to when I was, like, 12. When hurricanes would happen, you just hold hands, and you say, 'You know what, we have each other. We're praying,' and this roof can literally peel off of your house.
One of my great surprises when I was in America was about twenty-five years ago in Harvard, hearing Randall Jarrell deliver a bitter attack on the way poets were neglected. Yet there were about two thousand people present, and he was being paid five hundred dollars for delivering this attack.
I'm really fascinated by how the mob ethos permeates places like Las Vegas and Chicago. I have the book set in Las Vegas and Chicago for pretty specific reasons, some of which are that in both cases the mob history has become a tourist attraction - I'm actually doing a book signing in Las Vegas at The Mob Museum, which I am positively giddy about! - and I find that especially unusual. If you don't call these people "the Mafia" they're just a band of psychopaths killing people for profoundly dumb reasons.
I am proud to be in Los Angeles. I have a lot of fans that love me here. When you talk about the Meccas of boxing - Las Vegas, New York - now you have to talk about Los Angeles.
If you're not going to love the Spurs, just don't talk smack to me about it. And if you're going to talk smack to me about it, be funny.
It's weird to be called a celebrity or talk about it. I don't talk about being a celebrity in my business meetings. I don't talk about it with my friends. It's not a part of my life. It's a media perception of who I am.
If you are a reporter trying to find out what the hell's going on in government now, you have a devilish time. It is murder to set up an interview. It is murder to get someone's phone number. It's murder to be able to get in and talk to someone without a handler being present to chill it, or who doesn't insist upon questions in advance.