My younger sister's a comedian. She has a sketch comedy group in Chicago called Schadenfreude and I look at her with such admiration and envy because it's such an amazing thing to make someone laugh.
The most influential thing was the two Chris Rock specials that came out when I was in high school. I was obsessed with that stuff.
I have quite a lot of plastic sunglasses. It's just a nice accessory, it adds a final thing, and it's my favorite way of figuring an outfit.
'Bad mother' is probably the worst thing you can say to any woman who has children.
I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing.
The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
I like to eat. I'm always on the edge of how much can I eat without looking too - you know. If I eat something salty, it makes me want something sweet. I eat something sweet, then I want salty. And exercise is not my thing, though I do it.
The thing about dancing - what it taught me all those years - is it gives you an amazing sense of discipline in forcing yourself to do things that you know are good for you but you don't really want to do.
A wonderful thing happens over time. You fall in love with the sound of your own voice.
Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell.
The beautiful thing about theater is every night is an opportunity to incorporate what you discovered the night before.
I did a weird thing when I was about 24. For four years I had written quite a lot of poetry, and I started reading through it and thought some of it was really good. So I burnt it all.
The art of transformation is a very important thing to me, and I always believe I can say something more truthful through characters that are further away from me.
Human character is just endlessly fascinating, and there is no character who is one thing any more than any one person is just one thing. As you work on a character, he/she is revealed more and more. That's what I continue to love about the work.
'Let's Get Harry' was where I met Bob Singer and worked with him for the first time, and then 'Reasonable Doubts' was the second time, and there was a thing after that called 'Charlie Grace' that was the third time. I liked working with Bob. A nice man and a good partner.
When I write, I feel that I'm writing with my intellect. When I paint, I think it's some other force making me paint. I - as I wrote in my novel 'My Name is Red' - watch with amazement what my hand is doing on the paper, what kind of line, what kind of strange, beautiful thing it's doing in spite of my will, so to speak.
I've always had this thing where I can't stop. I hate standing still.
The thing about Chicago is that it really isn't like any other place. The architecture and the layout of the city are the best. I'm from the Midwest, and consider myself a Midwesterner. I feel most at home there. I love California. I have great friends in California. I just have always considered Illinois to be home.
Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of flaky - New Agey, you know? Which is partly why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing. I'm skeptical of any spiritual practice that doesn't involve other people and doesn't involve some sort of consistent tradition.
I think controversy is not always a bad thing. Jesus was controversial. It's through controversy that people often wake up and smell the coffee and say, 'What's going on here? Do we need to rethink something here?'
I think I used to do everything and then people had a problem with that within the band, so we're doing more of a communal thing.
To me, the most important thing is to wear something that I love and feel comfortable in, and Christmas is a great opportunity to get one of my old favourites out.
I have a pretty good family. But ever since I was little, I just felt like I wanted to be on my own. It was the same thing about school.
The one thing we know about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
The idea that you can live off the grid and just do your own thing is a very American idea - that you should be able to do your own thing, if you want to, if you're willing to pay the price for it. I think the price has gotten higher and higher.
People that know me know I'm very good about doing my own thing and minding my own business.
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.
The cool thing about designers is they have very specific points of view, and because my inspiration is always changing, it's easy to go, 'This feels right.' But just because I wear fancy dresses on weekends doesn't mean in my heart of hearts I'm not a jeans and T-shirt person.
America's biggest export is media and I think that's a positive thing.
It's like a 'chicken or the egg' thing. We're all part of the culture. We're reflecting it; we're changing it. So, yeah, I think culture is always changing.
My hair is always going to be purple; that's kind of my thing. It doesn't matter what length I make it, as long as it's purple.
I just reached the point where plot-driven novels don't hold my interest because I don't care about the fate of characters anymore - whether Emily marries Tom or not, that kind of thing.
I never do what anyone else is doing. I could walk away from music and become a farmer or do some crochet. The worst thing in life for me is to do something I'm not happy doing.
I think the whole thing, boy band, it's a little bit of a dirty word. They say it's not a good thing to be in a boy band. We want to change that. We want to make the boy band cool. It's not just about dancing and dressing the same.
I'm not the first player to have their home Grand Slam and not perform. There have been a few Australians and French players, you name it. It's a tough thing. But it is one of those things. Would I rather have a Grand Slam in my country than not? I would.
I genuinely have to work - I don't have enough money not to. But the last thing I would want is to be looked after.
