The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked - really, forced - difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one's own assumptions, often without quick or clear resolution.
I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and she wrote these hilarious autobiographies at the time.
Once you know the fundamentals of cooking, then you don't need to follow a recipe - you just know what herbs go well or what meats, or what combination of what goes together, and then you can just branch out from there. But if there's something specific that I want to make, I work on the recipe and tweak it to my own.
I think there's a natural system in your own head about how much violence the scene warrants. It's not an intellectual process, it's an instinctive process.
Love places someone else in the centre of your being and your own self is blurred.
Each author has his or her own voice. I read each book slowly so I can see the patterns they use to spread out the garden of earthly delights.
I was a very naughty child, on the verge of getting expelled, but I wasn't a bad child; everything I did was for my own entertainment. But when I went into an exam, I did really well.
Being at boarding school in the pre-internet era, especially a boarding school tucked away in the Oxfordshire countryside, was like being in a cocoon. You had your own life; world events happened elsewhere.
I'm on my own now. I have my own apartment.
I used to do my own make-up. I used to have this doll that had those big eyelashes on the top and bottom, and I think I copied her when I was doing my eyes, putting false eyelashes on the bottom as well as the top. So I came up with that look myself.
Tooting my own horn is of no interest to me... it takes you away from real life. It's a waste, and I don't find a need to sing my own praises.
I don't take any photographs. I travel a lot by myself, and I feel weird taking photos on my own.
You know for years, I've heard financial experts stress the importance of teaching your kids about money, but it wasn't until I saw my own son's perspective change that I became a true believer.
When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness.
Learning great works like the Liszt Sonata or Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' should be a struggle to a certain extent, where you need to labor intensely with your own brain and soul for the meaning of the work instead of cutting and pasting a bunch of stuff together from the Internet and - boom! - there you are with a performance ready to go.
In France, we don't yet have the craft that American TV does or big studios like Paramount. It was so cool going through those famous gates when you have your own little pass and picture on it. Woo hoo, I'm going to work!
It is feasible for someone who comes from a privileged background to understand the privilege they have had and to use the formal political arena in a way that would disperse power and engage with people in their own lives.
When I felt like an outsider, movies made me feel inside my own skill set.
Volunteering is a great way to look outside your own problems. Giving back to makes you happier by both giving you a sense of purpose and helping to put your problems in perspective.
Evil is important for us to look at, in my opinion, only insofar as it makes us look at our own actions and make us wonder, 'Am I participating in some kind of human evil that I really should stop doing?'
I love the work of Matisse and Picasso, but I don't have enough millions to own one. And I don't really believe in owning art, anyway.
I often draw from people in my own experience to base a character on, going back to my days with Mike Leigh.
I'd like to think that every captain around the world has a vision of how they want their teams to play and most of them are allowed to take their teams forward in their own way.
My own kids were with me in Berlin when Germany was reunited, and they were with me in Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed. We talked about these things at the dinner table, at their schools, with their friends.
The 'Twilight' movies are great in their own right, but they certainly don't have any sense of humor to them.
My parents were never into films, but I hope to make them proud with my work some day. In any case, in Bollywood, your surname matters only till your first, second, or third film at most. Beyond that, you are on your own.
I was hanging out with no one under 21. I thought that if I really wanted to fit in I had to... show them that I was in a way just as adult as they were, 'cause I could hold my own just as well as they could, if not better.
We want a macho high-earner - with the sensitivity of Gok Wan. We want a man with Brad Pitt's six-pack - but one who's prepared to overlook our own muffin top. No wonder most men don't know if they're coming or going.
Missionaries labor diligently to teach and baptize those who accept the gospel. In the process, their own testimonies become deeply rooted.
I want to make this perfectly clear: you can be sure that I will never be a yes-man except to my own conscience.
Well, I've maybe gotten 200 requests for interviews about Marilyn, and I just decided I'm gonna do my own.
I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself.'
I want young readers to know that to tell their own story is the most important thing they'll ever do.
I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmother's since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years.
I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side.
One day, the people who work in my kitchen stir-fried chopped Napa cabbage to serve with some meat or fish for their own dinner. I got to thinking: 'What if the cabbage was the most important thing on the plate?'
