When I was growing up in California, being vegetarians differentiated my mother and me from normal, held us away from the masses.

I think you save things from your past that you don't quite understand, and you put them in a box, and you save them for later until you can unwrap them and try to understand what they meant.

When I was in elementary school, I watched 'Cinema Paradiso' 22 times and memorized the dialogue. In the movie, everyone had a place, even the bum who thought he owned the piazza. Eccentricities were celebrated, and no one was isolated.

I didn't have the clothes that a kid with a famous, rich dad would have. I didn't have the house. I didn't have the mannerisms. I didn't have the sense of entitlement. And I don't mean that in a bad way: I just - we didn't have the stuff.

I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, 'You're tearing up the grass'; 'We're not raising grass,' Dad would reply. 'We're raising boys.'

I made about fifty-four dollars a week and spent it on two flying lessons every week at the age of sixteen and was able to get a license then pretty early and knew that that's what I wanted to do, some kind of a career in aviation. I did know about space flight, but at that point, it was still pretty far out there.

If you think about making a difference in the community, my family has always had a strong interest in the arts. I'm always interested in finding ways to innovate... It's a blend; it's not a point focus.