Of all living things, only humans consciously anticipate death; the consequent need to choose how to behave in its face - to worry about how to die - distinguishes us from other animals. The need to manage death is the particular lot of humanity.
A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.
My ambition is to do what I like and to do good things that I might not have done before.
There are so many things I want to do. Like, I want to get an artist, a musician, a photographer, and a bunch of dancers that I know and just travel across Africa and just film it and just see what happens. Do and learn as much as I possibly can. Luckily, I have a lot more time.
I love or hate things straight away. I like to go directly to action to see the result. I think I must be difficult, but at the same time, it's not for me to say.
Audiences change because life changes. Countries change geographically, climatically, socially and morally. Many things happen, and cinema, in a sense, reflects what's happening in the world.
People are interested in things not necessarily covered by the mainstream media, so they download things online. The categories are growing because people find out that they're not able to get information about stories that are of interest to them on the evening news.
There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realize my mortality. And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what's after it. And then you start hoping there is a God.
I think I might have played a song on piano or guitar in a school talent show. I went to an all girls school, so there were always little things going on, but it wasn't really until I was 17 that I did a proper performance. My first big one was Glastonbury, before I was signed.
As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas.
Decent wages keep people out of homeless shelters. Decent wages allow families to afford books and, I don't know, school fees and things like that.
I know a lot about a few things - mostly useless things.
I did a year of 'Guiding Light', and I was going to be a movie actor or a stage actor, but not a TV actor. That just wasn't going to happen. And obviously, things changed so remarkably.
At some of our most competitive universities, 17 times the amount of students that can go to the school, apply. And these applicants are from all over the country, and admissions officers need ways to sort through them. The SAT is just one of those things.
I probably would do over the Tom Cruise interview because I've thought of so many things I would have said in hindsight.
It's not like I'm anti-China. I just think it's ridiculous that we allow them to do what they're doing to this country, with the manipulation of the currency, that you write about and understand, and all of the other things that they do.
I believe the things that happened to me as a child scarred me terribly, and I wish somebody would have helped me with some of the things that happened.
When you're an athlete, you've got the horse blinders on pretty thick. Your exploration of other things in life tends to be limited because you have to have such a focus on what you're doing. I wasn't a good enough player to stray from that focus and still keep my ability.
Only younger brothers will understand me. We're following in the footsteps of older brothers. You are looking up to your brother. You want to do the same things. You want to do as good as he and do it even better.
One of the hardest things I've encountered whilst working on 'Pippin' is the consistent irony, as a reflection from the core material of the show, within my own life.
When I got dropped for the World Cup, there were times I didn't want to play anymore. I didn't want to practise. I couldn't motivate myself. Then I said, 'Look what are the options?' Cricket is the only option. Whether I play happily or sadly, it's still all I have. There are not a lot of things I am good at.
I saw 'Sleeping Beauty' when I was, like, 6 years old at the Mercury Theatre. Then, when I came to Disney, I was in the company of these wonderful artists. People like Glen Keane, like Mark Henn, who were brilliant animators who could really bring these things to life.
People do all sorts of things impulsively and follow those impulses into strange places.
I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he is ready to see you, and you can't go home again. Since the spring of 1995, I have been quietly, even gamely, reassessing point number three.
I'm an aggressive woman who gets things done, and that's the way it is, and I've never been embarrassed about the fact that I am pushy.
There are three things on my piano - my Best Villainess award, my Grammy, and my Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame statue.
My husband passed away a long time ago, and of course a lot of people have courted me. I've been taken to dinner and also to things like Larry Hagman, in particular years ago. And more recently, of course, little Hugh Jackman - and he's too young for me though, frankly.
In school, I did a lot of computer work. I'd take splices from Kurt Weill songs and loop them in bars, in beats of seven, trying all different kinds of things.
Writing and creating, those things come to me on their own. I feel like... you sort of summon them and it's like allowing the universe to enter your heart in an entirely different way to what it normally does. It's like inviting that energy of the universe to enter into your craft in a way where it has a meaning.
I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
One of the fun things about being an actor is stepping outside yourself and outside of your own experience. It's challenging yourself to totally commit to something that in your core is so wrong.
My mum told me to have patience. It's about realising that when things aren't going the way you want them to, or you don't have inspiration, it will come.
They do not air 'GH' in Holland, so I don't get recognized. But the Dutch are wonderfully unimpressed with celebrity, so even if the show did play over there it probably wouldn't affect things much. It's a wonderful life and I am so blessed.
One of the nice things about being busy is it makes you focus on what's important to you and how you use your time.
I guess I'd like people to be able to forget a lot of things and just enjoy the beauty of harmony and melody for a moment.
Smart people tend to enjoy thinking about a lot of things at once. I'd say entrepreneurs should be serial monogamists; do one thing at a time until you make sufficient progress and then move on.
