I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I've got a lot of that in me as well.
One of the things I've learned from 'Borgen' is that it's very easy to criticise people; 'I hate this politician, I hate what they do.' You are doing this right now with Margaret Thatcher, but sometimes it's hard to be a politician. I'm not defending Margaret Thatcher, but we believe our statesmen are also human beings.
Gosh, for me, when I was 15 or 16 years old, I was just starting to understand ideas and film and things like that. And then, you go see a movie like 'The Matrix' that absolutely blows your mind. It's not just trying to entertain you, but it's also trying to explore something about human nature and ask some really deep questions.
Bad things happen when you try to let things just happen. You can't be passive.
Just find things you think are fun, and then you'll be more inclined to want to go work out.
I found it hard to express myself in the world. I was very shy. I'm still very shy. But also, when I was a child, I could get very... I had this violence... I still get angry. But I don't break things; I'm not hysterical.
I'm bad at letting go of things.
All things, good and evil, come out, it seems, of the East. The Illuminati, like the Ismailites, dealt in allegories; and like the Mazdakites, they played with fire.
If I was a parent or a kid, I would need a cell phone, and those things are invaluable, but my kids are out of the house now, and I am thrilled when I wake up to not have a cell phone, and feel like today is stretching out in front of me for 1,000 hours, as it seems.
I'll always be working on five things at once, usually with those documents open at the same time because if I get stuck somewhere I'll jump over to something else. That's how my head has always worked.
I'd say that I'm super proud of only four or five things I've done, but mostly I'd like to be remembered as a really good actor who people enjoyed watching.
I would say raising capital is one of the weakest things for most entrepreneurs.
You've got to internalize the character. You've got to learn the words. These are separate things, but they work together.
The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.
It does our Muslim compatriots no favors to fuel suspicions and leave things unspoken.
I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.
You can't regulate child labor. You can't regulate slavery. Some things are just wrong.
Why the hell do we make such a big deal out of things that shouldn't be a big deal?
I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I'd rather tell a story about somebody else.
Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock'n'roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I've done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back.
People ask me a lot, 'Well, can you be pro-life and be feminist? Can you be conservative and be feminist?' And I think that, yeah, maybe personally you can be those things. But I think if you're advocating for legislation, or if you're fighting to limit other women's rights, then you can't really call yourself a feminist.
I don't much like post-modernism, because post-modernist has become the basket in which every mediocre person can shuffle things and pretend to do something significant, and we could also mention who use post-modernism in this way - maybe we shouldn't.
Television is such an evolving medium. When you're doing a TV show, it's not like you just shoot for six weeks and you're in an editing room with all of your footage. It's like a guitar or a car, you have to fine tune things. You stop doing what's not working, you work on what is working and you add things that do work.
I get a little scared sometimes. A lot of things scare me.
I'm one of those people who always tries to overachieve. I want to do more. I want to do bigger things.
I really feel that the thing that I love the most about my career is that it is so eclectic. You know, I've gone from so many genres and so many different mediums and I love that most - that people have always given me the chance to do vastly different things.
It's one of the wonderful things that the Academy does - a talented person comes along like Mira Sorvino, and it elevates them up to stardom.
I'm somebody who, as a child, had a lot of insecurity about stable housing, where I was going to be living, if I was going to have a roof over my head, all those types of things. And I know the impact it can have on you psychologically and emotionally.
In Jenny Offill's remarkable first novel, 'Last Things,' 7-year-old Grace Davitt watches her mother, Anna, descend into madness and tries to make sense of the claustrophobic world that Anna has created for her.
When you're filming, you work 19-hour days and you know more about what's going on with your crew and co-workers than you do with your husband. You're away, you miss things. It's taxing. Relationships fail because of it.
One place that I really feel comfortable is being a comedienne. I'm very socially inept. There's so many things that I can not do in life, and this is, like, the one thing that I have mastery over. It's my world. And anybody who's coming to the show, it's like they're coming because they know that this is my world.
I was trying to learn how to deal with the freedom that I had away from home for the first time. 'Long Black Train,' the song and the album, are very special to me. It was just one of those things that I felt like God gave to me for a purpose, and I've been out here promoting that purpose.
There are many things we can do with Scotland and, indeed, with others which would be hugely beneficial to both Scotland and to Ireland, so I'm absolutely up for all of that.
Reading code is like reading all things written: You have to scribble, make a mess, remind yourself that the work comes to you through trial and error and revision.
Recycling, packaging, businesses are changing all of those things because that's what consumers want.
I'm not out to conquer anything, which I think is a good thing. That's why I also think crazy, different things come my way. I really don't have an agenda, and I'm really happy not to have one. I'm just keeping it light.
