I used to not back down from a challenge.
I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.
One of the strangest things that used to happen at half time was that you'd come in, and you would have to sit down and be quiet. Get your drink, your energy bars or whatever, and sit down.
After a few drinks, my mom would recite her lines as Portia in 'The Merchant of Venice' from her high school play. But I first discovered Shakespeare properly when I was about five. I used to look for the most complicated books I could find and pretend to be reading them. I wanted people to think I was smart.
I wasn't as used to the new dumb questions, so when men I had once thought of as wise daddies now asked me 'How do you write?' I did not try and spill red wine in their suede pants. I would just smile and say, 'On a typewriter in the mornings when there's nothing else to do.'
In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries.
Potatoes are popped, with no oil, using the same technology used in the rice cake manufacturing business. It took a lot of trial and error and lots of practice, though, to get the right flavor.
Latin American Art is an operational term used to describe art actually made in the more than twenty countries that make up Latin America and that encompass Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean.
My old songs used to take place in Gothenburg; then, when I lived in Melbourne, the songs just naturally took place more in Melbourne.
I think people are used to seeing actors be wide open and desperately giving of themselves, and while I do that on a movie set as much as I can, it's so unnatural for me to do it on television, in interviews, in anything like that. I also don't find that my process as an actor is really anyone else's business.
'Moonwalking with Einstein' refers to a memory device I used when I memorized a deck of playing cards at the U.S. Memory Championship. When I competed in 2006, I set a new U.S. record by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute and 40 seconds. That record has since fallen.
When I was younger, I used to be a part of the surfing-and-skateboarding community.
I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night, 'There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me dreaming of being a movie star.' But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.
There was a mission: To match the cover of 'Extraordinary' to the cover of the paperback 'Impossible,' which was commercially successful. Consider the outdoor natural setting, the single girl in motion with her hair blowing, and the cursive font used for the title; both covers have these in common.
I'm used to a lot of love scenes. I'm used to something that requires me to kick up my heels and wink-wink, flirt-flirt with a twirl of my skirt.
I've always been fascinated by books. When I was young, my grandfather used to hand out a book - which would be anything from a biography to a classic - to me every week and ask me to write a piece on what I thought about it. On the other hand, my mother used to love reading thrillers and bestsellers.
When I was on the radio, I used to be able to go a lot farther than I can now. You don't really remember until you're on the radio again, sometimes in your old radio station and sitting with the guys you used to work with and you go, 'Oh yeah, I can't say these things anymore. I'm handcuffed.'
Like most of us, I'm used to juggling about 52 roles in life. Wife. Mother. Sister. Friend. Author. Sometimes I feel a bit 'multiple-personality'.
I remember where I was when I first heard 'Boyz N The Hood' - 126th Street and Normandy, South Central, Los Angeles. I remember that I was on my porch. What they described in that song was so vivid and so clear to me because it was the kind of life I was used to witnessing and partly experiencing in my neighborhood.
The way 'star' used to be reserved for a small number of people, and when the star category became so vast, they came up with 'superstar,' and then they came up with 'megastar.'
When I was born, the Internet was barely two years old. It was the preserve of academics, used to connect dozens rather than billions of users. There weren't many who predicted it would transform our world.
It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England.
I used to be a huge collector, and my big thing was stickers.
I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing.
I remember when I was in the sixth grade, my friends used to come over and we would give each other blindfolded makeovers, which turned out interestingly to say the least!
Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.
'The Muppet Show' was huge. I watched it all the time as a kid, and I really loved the way they used music on that. I also remember hearing the radio in the car as a kid, like Stevie Wonder and Simon and Garfunkel.
I've used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I've still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.
In my screenplays - from the very beginning I've always used tape. I talk my screenplays. And then have somebody transcribe them.
High culture isn't what it used to be.
I used to play in the subway. If everyone tossed in a quarter, at the end of the day it would add up. It shows you aren't invisible. And it's better than being ignored, or kicked in the head, or worse.
I'm not quite used to being seen through the eyes of fans yet. Being met with squeals and screams - I haven't gotten used to that.
People call me an instinctive actor. I used to consider that an insult early on, only because I had never studied. Now... I love it.
I have no time for the endless nostalgia: 'Oh gosh I used to . . . ' Life is too short; I don't have any time for sitting and saying I miss things. What's the point? Go and do something else.
I'm a tomboy. I used to get into a lot of fights. Don't know why - self-expression, I guess.
I'd never watch a horror film, but after I found out I was going to be in one, I watched, like, four of them, including The Shining, I was terrified - I couldn't sleep for days. But I wanted to get myself used to things I was going to see on the set.
