I think if Roman Polanski had asked me to do the phone book, I would have said, 'Yes.'
I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.
I've been asked about this constantly, and I compare it to how if you're walking down the street and some schizo guy comes up to you and vomits on you: You wouldn't be hurt by that, you'd just think it's weird.
As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them!
I don't think if you asked any of my childhood friends they would say that I had a weird childhood; they might say there weren't a lot of regular rules, the conversations in the house were always very open, dreams were a great thing to talk about, everybody was making something all the time.
Don't force your kids into sports. I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It's the child's desire to play that matters, not the parent's desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun.
I went into a French restaraunt and asked the waiter, 'Have you got frog's legs?' He said, 'Yes,' so I said, 'Well hop into the kitchen and get me a cheese sandwich.'
I feel really lucky. There wasn't a doubt in my mind when Phil asked me to marry him.
Serial tasking is hard because switching tasks is hard, even when the tasks are easy and similar. In some experiments, bilingual speakers are asked to read out numbers, first in one language and then midway in another language. They often stumble at the switch, taking many tries before they hit their stride again.
I get asked all the time if I want to do more dramatic acting, and I really doubt that dramatic actors get asked if they want to do more comedies. I don't really know why that is.
In all honesty, if somebody asked me the secret of auditioning for Americans, I don't know. Often, I do what's called self-taping for America. I go over there quite a lot to sit in a room and do stuff in front of people. You feel like a performing monkey. It's bizarre.
One of the reasons why I created the podcast called the 'The Call-In' that we do through Array - because as a black artist, every time I sit down with mainstream media, I'm asked about issues of race, identity and culture. No one asked what they ask my white male counterparts, which is: 'Where do you like to put the camera?'
The power of the word in Morocco belonged to men and to the authorities. No one asked the point of view of poor people or women.
I didn't have boyfriends until my late teens. I was at a girls' boarding school, and my stepfather disapproved of me going out with anybody. I never really came across any boys. When I did, one of them asked me out, and I was petrified. I felt like a fish out of water, and it was excruciating.
President Bush and I had asked Congress to appropriate a half-billion dollars to school vouchers. We didn't get it, and we were disappointed. But we did not go out and form a corporation to pay for it. That would have been a problem.
I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, 'What for?' I said, 'I'm going to buy some sugar.'
When I was interviewed after I got hired to replace Walter Alston, a future Hall of Famer, I was asked: 'Don't you feel pressure on you?' I said: 'Want to know something? I'm worried about the guy who's going to have to replace me.'
The thing about acting is you have to wait to be asked to the dance.
I was 17 when Peter Jackson asked me to be in 'Heavenly Creatures.'
I'm asked to do 'Strictly Come Dancing' on a regular basis, but I always say no.
We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn't want to just sell shoes. I wasn't even into shoes - but I was passionate about customer service.
It's interesting: John Calley at Warner Bros. helped me put 'Alice' together. It was very unusual back then for a studio to support an actress the way he backed and supported me. He even asked me if I wanted to direct the film, which I didn't feel prepared to at that point.
Between work and the kids, I never see anyone anymore. I mean, when I first met with ABC last spring, and they asked me what I'd been doing lately, I said: 'Gee, I have two kids. I'm usually covered with food, wrinkled and feel guilty all the time.
I had long been resistant to doing a documentary about my mother for personal reasons. And I thought there was no way she'd want to, but then I asked her and she said 'yes.'
A lot of people have asked me how short I am. Since my last divorce, I think I'm about $100,000 short.
It's kind of a shame that it's even an issue. Not being gay, I can't fully appreciate how complicated that is. In the article, the interviewer asked me, and I said that if I were, I would just say it.
I once heard two ladies going on and on about the pains of childbirth and how men don't seem to know what real pain is. I asked if either of them ever got themselves caught in a zipper.
He asked why and I said, 'Because Gwyneth has a fat suit, my wife has a fat suit - I don't get a fat suit?' He looked at me and said, 'You mean you don't have one on?'
If you'd asked me then if I saw how big 'The Steve Harvey Morning Show' was going to be, I couldn't tell you. But I knew I could reach people not as a character but as Steve Harvey, because although I tell jokes for a living, I've also lived, and I think I can relate to you more than you know.
I have to be asked, I guess, but I love the idea of marriage. I think it's beautiful. I'm such a romantic, and I always have been.
In my first film, I was a basketball player. Like every good actor, I lied when they asked me if I could play.
Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.
I was embarrassed when a businessman friend asked, 'What's the yearly budget of your talk show? What's the per-episode budget?' And I looked at him with these blank, typical-model eyes and said, 'I don't know.' I call myself a businesswoman, and I don't know that?
Then, in 2000, John Reid, Elton John's former manager, asked me to audition for the stage version of The Graduate he was producing. So I worked on it, got the part, and after three weeks' rehearsal I was on stage!
Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?
Everybody asks, 'How do you do it?' And I'm like, 'Well, I'm recurring on both shows, so the reality is, I can do both shows.' And that's the best position to be in. And 'Heroes' just asked me to come back and do more. So once I stop airing on '24' for a little while, I'll be on 'Heroes,' and then I'll be back on '24.'
