Chuck Barris

There's tons of creative people in television that have one failure after another, and they just step up higher. I could never get over that. When I had a failure, there was no such thing as just getting over it.

The Gong Show provided me with five years of the happiest times of my life, but that's that. And to be known as the guy who gave the world The Gong Show - listen, my Uncle George isn't known as anything. So I guess it isn't so bad in that context.

One of the first coaches I worked with on the national team told me that I was too skinny, too puny, and had no natural acceleration. He said I'd be better off looking for another facet of sport to follow. That was a really, really bad moment. For a long time, I felt as if my dad was the only one who had faith in me.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.