The minute someone says 'Oh God, you could never do that; you can't get that kind of stuff on the air'that's the kind of stuff I want to do.
I like solving problems, and science provides a logical way of solving real-life problems.
An act of leadership is to say that whatever's happening now is not good enough and suggest or show that we can do better. If you don't have that, then you don't have the catalyst for continuous improvement.
Elementary school children are very impressionable
Successful ecologists are successful in part because they have prepared their minds to attack scientific problems using a variety of intellectual tools.
There are two things I enjoy most about my work. First, I get to work with interesting and enthusiastic people who are also fired up about science. Second, every once in a while I have moments in which I suddenly understand the solution to a problem that I've been working on - those are great moments.
Becoming a bird ecologist was just luck! I had the chance to be a field assistant for a scientist working in the Galapagos Islands, and while I was there, I saw a particular problem in behavioral biology that I wanted to solve and, in the process, made myself into a bird ecologist.
In the middle of Beaches there's a scene from the "Laverne & Shirley" TV show so they see some history of my work in each film.
Television is just amazing - how many people see it and how many people recognize you, and I think once you've had the opportunity and have been in front of the public, it's very flattering to have people come up and say hello to you. It's a tremendous industry. I've been in places where people come out of the woodwork. And you would never think - small towns in France or traveling through Europe - and there are so many of those people there that recognize you, and you've been in their homes. I find it to be a very flattering thing.
My father is best known for his light comedies, and Im best known for crazy bad guys with short tempers.
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.