I first got into acting when I was 14, coming back from a junior high school basketball game. My mom picked me up and she had been mentioning, prior to that, this community production of 'Godspell', a couple towns over. I was reluctant, at first, and she bribed me with some great dinner that was in that town, neighboring the theater.
Some of the things that have been the most meaningful to me have been experiences I've shared with my family.
If ergonomists have their way, future products won't be built for some hypothetical average person but will conform to the biomechanical needs of whatever particular human body happens to come into contact with them.
I think any parent, at some time or other, has thoughts of their child dying. That's probably one of the worst things that could ever happen to a parent.
When some people have a difficult job to do, they give up everything else until that job is finished. Others just give up.
I am different than some people would like me to be. I just don't buy into that the personal can be political.
I think right now, you've seen these artists pop up over the last decade who've flirted with branching together a lot of different kinds of music. Some of them have been huge, and sold millions of records. And I think over time it's become a little bit of what the industry can be.
I've never read any of the '50 Shades of Grey' books because the Internet pre-educated me about the 'my inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves' material.
Some infrastructure projects clearly require massive, coordinated investment - interstate highways or a new trans-Hudson tunnel, for instance. Others don't have to. We should be unafraid of pilot projects and learning.
I think, to be a director, sometimes you need to have certain hunches - you have to believe in some gut feeling.
I need to lose some weight. I'm getting really fat. But I'm getting older, and I just can't stop eating wonderful food. Rich, wonderful food.
I hope that any expansion of London will learn from the planning examples of some of its most desirable areas such as Chelsea, Notting Hill, Belgravia and Mayfair. All are characterised by high density and a generosity of green spaces.
I have no idea if some societies, anthropologically speaking, aren't really suited for democracy. I don't think that's true.
I always have a lot of things going on because some things take years to make and others take five minutes. I like that there's always something going on. Working doesn't have such a momentous feel - like it's all or nothing.
The biggest barrier we've seen to student progress is this: School policies and practices often prevent good teachers from doing great work and even dissuade some talented Americans from entering the profession. This needs to change.
Vice presidents are supposed to be eternally loyal, which is why it is so difficult for some to figure out how to succeed their bosses.
The superhero genre speaks to a vast swath of humanity these days, and studios are in the business of constantly renewing their money-printing licenses. I sense we're nearing a saturation point with some of these icons, where it becomes more about the action figures and Happy Meals than it does the mythological heartbeat of the core ideas.
This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.
What I've learned is that the most troublesome people don't tell you 100% of the story, and keep some facts to themselves. They just don't give you the full picture, and that's very worrisome to me.
I'm the only one in America who belongs to the 'Cure Cancer' party, so if you give money to cancer, like Harry Reid and Max Baucus, some of these guys really helped us raise big money for cancer, I give them big money for their reelections.
Find some fun way to get a little more oil on your hands or mud on your boots. Sometimes, that's what it takes to take down some of the really big problems.
As long as Hamas needs the support it could conceivably get from the international community through the Palestinian Authority, it has an interest in playing nice with Fatah. And Fatah has an interest in playing nice with Hamas because it needs some source of legitimacy on the West Bank.
Some people are going to be happy with my decision, some people aren't... But I must live my life.
To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. We're making a movie. We're making it like we're putting on a play.
In a way, it has been an advantage for me to be a woman because there is always some academic committee that needs you to fill a quota!
The thing is that I always consider myself lucky that I can actually cry listening to some music.
Video is moving online in a big way. It's proven to be a challenging market for some companies that start out as a pure Internet company such as Joost.
Sometimes I feel people can move past what they've grown up around and their surroundings while in a place and some people need closure after they've left and then coming back. I've seen it happen with people I knew growing up that hated each other, and then years later you go home and you see them walking down the street and they have babies.
Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.
I want to take some jams and really concentrate on hooking up with Page because, since he's the only one not next to me, and his sound is mainly coming from my monitor rather than through the air, it's a little harder for me to hook up with him.
The cow, basically, eats three basic things in their feed: corn, beets, and barley, and so what I do is I actually challenge my staff with these crazy, wild ideas. Can we take what the cow eats, remove the cow, and then make some hamburgers out of that?
Dad, I'm in some trouble. There's been an accident and you're going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things.
I'm not the first to admit that raising a child in Park Slope, Brooklyn, can bear an embarrassing resemblance to the TV show 'Portlandia.' My wife and I try to have some ironic distance from the culture of organic, chemical-free parenting, but we're often participants.
I miss my 'Facts of Life' family. But I had been preparing myself to leave the show for some time before we called it quits.
I'm proud to be part of the Dr. Pepper Scholarship Giveaway. It's a great program that gives me the chance to brighten the day for some lucky college students with free tuition.
If you've spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.
