I read reviews and consider myself pretty 'plugged in' to the literary cosmos, yet one of the things I love best about book-touring is the opportunity to compare notes with favorite booksellers around the country. I always come home with books by authors I'd never heard of - or books I've read about but didn't realize I might love.
My cultural experiences were as important to my formation as many of the other things that happened to me.
Community, responsibility, flexibility, tenacity - these are all things that I imbue my characters with. They are basically good, nonjudgmental people who succeed at the end of the day, sometimes in spite of themselves.
I'm definitely sensitive to the idea of exploitation. You don't want to glamorize certain things.
It became motivation as opposed to something else - the thing about poverty is that it starts affecting your mind and your spirit because people don't see you. I chose from a very young age that I didn't want that for my life. And it very much has helped me appreciate and value the things that are in my life now because I never had it.
Producing is so exciting because you can enable things to happen, whether it's like discovering a filmmaker who you're taking a chance on, protecting a battle and driving home at the end of the day just going, 'I'm so glad I stayed late at work and fought hard for that. Had my passion. Won that battle.'
When I'm not depressed, I draw strength and beauty from depression; when I am depressed, I find no such things.
Over the years Woodstock got glorified and romanticised and became the event that symbolised Utopia. It's the last page of our collective memory of the age of innocence. Then things turned ugly and would never be the same again.
I get excited to create things that don't exist in the same world as 'Hamilton' because that world is really well done and doesn't need me to inform it anymore.
I don't know what to do with myself between films. I end up doing unhealthy things like shopping or drinking. I'm pretty schizophrenic about it.
Families in real life don't tend to resolve things neatly.
There's still a lot of things you can legitimately do to make America safe through electronic surveillance.
It is not according to my mode of doing things, to bring a suit against a man that I have the power in my own hands to punish.
Oh, Alexander Hamilton fell short of his best self every now and again, and he still managed to do these wonderful things - well, so do I. So what am I capable of?
I say don't overreact; cool your jets. Focus on things that you can control: your business, your employees' welfare, your guests, and the quality of the product that you dish up. Do that, keep your chin down, pay attention to business, and the sun will come up tomorrow. That's the way I figure it.
Loving oneself isn't hard, when you understand who and what 'yourself' is. It has nothing to do with the shape of your face, the size of your eyes, the length of your hair or the quality of your clothes. It's so beyond all of those things and it's what gives life to everything about you. Your own self is such a treasure.
I learnt that if I want to make any difference, or changes to my world, then I've got to be involved. We need passion - that's how things change.
While I'm totally up for all things girly, two months of mehendi is a fairly long time!
It's true: one of the things that I've always thought about American society is that you never get the sort of natural politicisation of class consciousness that you would get in the United Kingdom or even in Australia.
I've always dipped my finger in so many things.
My mom was the center of my support system, that place I always went to talk things through, whether I was feeling joy or fear. She was always there with a huge, open heart and the best advice.
The great thing about acting is that, until you're dead, you can do it. There are aspects to it that as time goes on you hope you get better at, and there are a lot of things that I'm excited to explore.
I like to learn about things. I could learn about business, which I knew nothing about. Since the age of 7, I wanted to be a doctor and nothing else.
Doing things like playing music, something that's so natural and basic to human function, running around in nature, eating delicious food. These things are intrinsic in basic, primordial to human beings, so that's sort of a way to return to a blank canvas, allowing my true personality to return.
The paradox is, I can't miss the good things about my father while he is alive, but I will of course miss him... when he is dead.
Things pop out of people's mouths that you wouldn't expect them to say, so I've stopped trying to guess ahead of time who might be interesting to talk to.
I do feel almost violent when I'm watching things that I don't think are good enough. I get furious for the audience. I want to say to them, 'This play is not supposed to be like this. They've got it completely wrong. You should be electrified by this.'
I think love is the greatest force in the universe. It's shapeless like water. It only takes the shape of things it becomes.
If I could throw my phone away, I would probably do it. It's always on silent, and I don't like when it rings and people are calling. We could live without those things in the past when we just had a phone on the street somewhere, on the corner or at the house. I have no interest in telling all the people what I do every day and where I am.
Football is one of those games that definitely relates to life in a lot of ways. Everything can be going good, and just like that, you have a turnover. Things are going south, you're going the opposite direction. How are you going to recover from it? That's the beauty in this game.
The most important thing you can do is make the distinction between customer service and guest hospitality. You need both things to thrive, but they are completely different.
Let's be realistic, how many people are buying a $2,000 skirt? I love to design things that people can actually buy. I'm staggered by what a boot costs today.
I've been so entwined with technology since I was about 15, recording myself and multitracking and producing things on my own.
I like happy endings in movies. I think life has a happy ending. When it's all said and done, it's all something worthwhile, and I want my movies to reflect that. There are enough things to be sad about. When you pop in a movie, let the message be one that's one of hope.
You draw the best things from your parents and family. You're going to pick up some of the bad things as well - there's a temper that runs through my dad's side of the family that I'm not especially keen on picking up a giant block of.
When I'm not writing, I do a lot of research reading on the shape of civilization. Fiction can be a lot of different things... but I feel like it's my job to write about the way things are.
