If we bought everything on the Internet, our eyes and mouths and nostrils would probably begin to film over with a tegument – one initially tissue-thin and capable of being removed each morning, but which gradually thickened and hardened until we were imprisoned in our own tiny minds.
My biggest tip is this… treat bread like chocolate. You wouldn’t have a chocolate bar in the morning and then a double chocolate bar at lunch and then some chocolate before dinner. I was essentially eating a loaf of bread a day. And that doesn’t work for me.
I don’t watch a lot of TV. I just don’t have a whole lot of time, and my life is so disorganized, I don’t have any kind of consistent schedule. Usually, I pop in a DVD or flip around when I get home at 4 in the morning and try to fall asleep.
I lived in Cuba – I was there for one year in the 1950s. We built the famous nightclub, which is still there, Tropicana, and a restaurant, Montecatini, that I opened is still there. I was there when the U.S. ambassador said everyone must leave because Castro was arriving the next morning.
This morning I lay in the bathtub thinking how wonderful it would be if I had a dog like Rin Tin Tin. I’d call him Rin Tin Tin too, and I’d take him to school with me, where he could stay in the janitor’s room or by the bicycle racks when the weather was good.
A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.
Sometimes it’s so weird just to do an interview. This morning I was back in my parents’ house, with my brother, and we went for a jog together, then had breakfast as a family. And a couple of hours later I’m wearing high heels and a dress and makeup, and talking about my job.
In a few days an officer came to our camp, under a flag of truce, and informed Hamilton, then a captain of artillery, but afterwards the aid of General Washington, that Captain Hale had been arrested within the British lines condemned as a spy, and executed that morning.
I love my life as a missionary, keeping myself on the front lines. The image in my mind is that God, my general, stands at the door when I go out every morning; and, knowing what the war is like, day after day he gives me his most powerful weapon: his Spirit. For this I am grateful.
I had a very simple, unremarkable and happy life. And I grew up in a very small town. And so my life was made up of, you know, in the morning going to the river to fetch water – no tap water, and no electricity – and, you know, bathing in the river, and then going to school, and playing soccer afterwards.
There was this sausage factory a block away from my childhood apartment. It didn’t smell nice, like chorizo or something; it was pretty foul. Just nasty. But that smell reminds me so much of my childhood because every morning when I was going to school, I would smell that.
On the morning, Daddy and I get up at six o’clock because Christmas trees must be bought in the dark. We walk to the other end of town, as the big harbour is just the right setting for buying a Christmas tree. We spend hours choosing, looking at every branch suspiciously. It’s always cold.
I write every day. I don’t have a writing schedule. I write when I feel like it. Fortunately, I feel like it all the time. I am writing for hours. I do like to write in the morning. I start after breakfast, like 9 o’clock, and I’ll write till lunch, about 1. And after lunch, I just have fun.
I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.
I just can’t stand the fact that they’re going out on their own – I love having my kids around, and I’m angry at them for going out and becoming independent. I want to tuck them in and drive them to school in the morning, but they just won’t let me do that anymore.
I woke up one morning to an email from my friend Alex that said she’d had her bag stolen. Ordinarily, I’m quite quick on the uptake, but – maybe because of the way it was worded – I immediately replied, ‘What??????’ As soon as I hit send, I realised I was being scammed. But then they replied, and I thought, ‘Well, why not?’
In 2012, I received a phone call from the family of Arsala Rahmani, the Afghan senator with whom I’d become friendly. That morning, a gunman had pulled up alongside Rahmani’s vehicle, idling in a crowded intersection, and shot him point blank.
I can’t say for sure where I was headed the first time my mom put a blue blazer on me. Church, probably. West Side Presbyterian in Ridgewood, New Jersey, specifically, where my blazer was paired with a clip-on tie and a pair of khakis for a Sunday morning with my fellow congregants.
John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer.
People get this very romantic vision of a fashion designer who in one night makes 25 sketches and in the morning throws them on the table and there are a lot of women in white aprons with the pins on the lapel and they start to grab the sketches and… It’s not like that.
I love KIND bars. My favorites are coconut and almond and the dark chocolate and sea salt because staying fueled helps keep me from getting sick or injured. Bananas have also made a great comeback in my life. My kids eat them all the time on the go, which has inspired my go-to pre-run morning meal of peanut butter and banana on toast.
I do this thing at every party: I go to a party, I stand around for, like, 45 minutes, and then I turn to my wife and say, ‘I think we should go home.’ And then we leave, and then I wake up the next morning and say to my wife, ‘We don’t go out anymore.’ It’s a great trick.
I don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Jeez, I feel great today. I think I’ll write a song.’ I mean, anything is more interesting to me than writing a song. It’s like, ‘I think I’d like to write a song… No, I guess I better go feed the cat first.’ You know what I mean? It’s like pulling teeth. I don’t enjoy it a bit.
I do live a very Hugh Beaumont existence. I’m up every morning, taking my kids to school and all that, which obviously does interest me. But then it’s taking meetings with goofballs and auditioning for crap, and then I spend a lot of time on the road.
Since I am from Spain, once the morning has gone, I like to take a nap while falling asleep to black and white movies. It feels less lonely. There is a comfort in hearing their voices, like when you’re a child and your mother tells you a story before bedtime.
