Believe it or not, I don't own a TV. Crazy huh? I'm not a big movie-goer either. I just feel like I'm watching work. I am always outside and couldn't care less about what's on TV these days.
I gave the couple a hint of a design that would work great with the bones of their home. They weren't ready for it, and they embarrassed themselves and that's too bad.
I have been influenced by many different artists at many different stages of my life. Starting out, it was people like Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and Fiona Apple. As I got older I got deeper into the work of bands like the Beatles, artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Etta James, and Joni Mitchell.
I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.
When you're free of editorial control, you owe it to yourself to obtain feedback from friends and readers. Some take those criticisms to heart and incorporate it into their work, and some ignore them.
During the week, my days are consumed with school commitments, play-dates and work for Baby Buggy, a nonprofit I started, which collects kids' gear for parents in need. So on weekends, I look forward to uninterrupted time with my family.
As an actress, there were so many months, years even, when I didn't get work, when I wanted to quit.
The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone, don't you?
You can't stop demographics. And show me a fence that ever worked. It didn't work at Hadrian's Wall. The Great Wall of China didn't work. The Berlin Wall.
For me, a great fantasy is real people, a world I recognise, human struggle and magic. You've got to have magic to make a fantasy work. But I like my magic to be subtle. I don't want magic coming out of the hands of wizards. I want it to be pervading, sinister somehow.
I don't think balance is something you get from someone else; it's something women have to find from within. For me, finding balance is still a work in progress.
I've learned that if I only put my mind to one thing that I can get tunnel vision. Then I may not be as open to other opportunities because I'm so focused on one thing. I think what's worked better for me personally is I have three goals every day: be nice, work hard, and make friends.
There's not a day that I don't work on vocals, have vocal coaches, go to acting classes, read books.
I honestly always thought my Master's in Fine Arts would get me further in the acting world than knowing how to work an espresso machine!
Time and again, a student will send me an urgent appeal to hear her, saying she is poor and wants my advice as to whether it is worthwhile to continue her studies. I invariably refuse such requests, saying that if the student could give up her work on my advice, she had better give it up without it.
When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.
What we're putting forward is the most radical reform of the welfare state... for 60 years. I think it will have a transformative effect in making sure that everyone is better off in work and better off working rather than on benefits.
Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.
In some ways it's taken me decades to come clean and make honest work - and still to this day, sometimes I find myself wanting to hide behind my work and deny the more biographical aspects.
I mean, there's a little bit that gets out, but for the most part, the thing that makes us work, and makes our family successful, and our life successful, is when we walk home and we walk into our doors of our house, all that other stuff is left outside. It's not a factor.
You can play anyone if you're open enough. It's a form of possession. Each time you work on something, you allow yourself to be possessed by creating the environment for it. Then you allow the possession to happen - but not at the expense of your sanity or of your identity.
I want books to give me insight into the way people's brains work and hearts work, and that's what engages me.
I hate morning workout; I'm a night person more. But it's good to work out in the mornings because then you can have all day free.
It wasn't until I was in my teens that I started admiring writers as inspirations for my own work, and my earliest influences there were Stephen King, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard Adams.
When I started out as a model, I took things for granted. Because I bagged work thanks to my looks, I didn't give my body any importance. I was a couch potato who'd eat anything. Then, in 2005, a tabloid ran a story calling me fat. I thought, 'I'm famous. How can I be fat?' It was a slap. I decided to get fit.
People always get confused. They talk about coaches. The reality is, these coaches and managers that everybody thinks are in so much control, they work for us. They're our employees.
I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.
I used to ask Sean questions about acting. He's a brilliant actor, but I could never digest his information. I work primarily on an intuitive level.
I so admire the discipline, the work ethic, and the sacrifices fighters make to master all aspects of mixed martial arts.
After winning the Oscar, I was committed to do 'Fried Green Tomatoes,' but I didn't know what the next thing would be after that. It was a scary time. But the advantage of TV is the regular work. All you need is a hit series, I guess.
Our institute's agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues, and we work very internationally.
To be sure, no piece of social machinery, however well constructed, can be effective unless there is back of it a will and a determination to make it work.
My creativity and my political work are linked. I don't do this work out of guilt or out of responsibility.
I'm usually the one who creates most of my work. I have a lot of different ideas that I want to do, so I'm always like, 'Get on it, girl.'
When you put a lot of hard work into one goal and you achieve it, that's a really good feeling.
The sad reality is that girl-on-girl hate is such a big issue in schools, at work, or online, and it never made any sense to me because, as women, we know how awesome other women can be.
