Italy remained attached to conservatism. It had a political class that lived in the past and didn't build the future. The past is our strength, but it risks becoming our ruin if we walk with our heads turned backwards.
We all have genes that come from our ancestors that aren't used - they're not turned on. So we actually carry ancient genes with us. If you could figure out how to turn those on, you could resurrect ancient characteristics from our ancestors.
I promised a lot of people I'd slow down when I turned 80.
We kept my middle schooler home from school for three days before we turned in our final draft because she was so mean and so brutal at editing out all the cheesy bits. She would roll her eyes and make fun of us, and it was what we needed.
When I wrote 'The Good Body,' I turned 40 and suddenly had this stomach. It seemed like the end of the world. Because I didn't value my body. I was constantly judging it, but I also didn't live in it.
Once I turned 40, I stopped giving a rip about my detractors, the people who say nasty things. It's more candid and honest than it would have been. I share my failures, which is important.
Unless one is planning to go shopping - basically begging to be smothered by the ravening throngs of returners and bargain hunters; an embrace as constricting as that hugging machine designed by autistic author Temple Grandin - then Boxing Day feels like a bar after last call when the lights have been turned up.
The more nearly the film cutter approaches the natural law of interest, the more invisible will be his cutting. If the camera moves from one person to another at the exact moment that you in the legitimate theatre would have turned your head, you will not be conscious of a cut.
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.
I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.
When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I've turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I'm still a slave, only my price tag is higher.
I gotta admit, when you've been doing this a long time, going out to the audience and asking for them to help out with crowdfunding, it's a gut check. You never know how that's gonna turn out. Luckily for us, it turned out well.
I went to Coachella once, and it was only to go see Leonard Cohen. I got in the car and sat through all the crazy traffic in L.A. to get there - instead of a two hour drive, it takes, like, six hours. Then I watched his set and turned around and left. I just so wanted to see him perform in the desert.
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!
Everything I was told should be my greatest insecurities and weaknesses, everything that I've been labeled - short, nerdy, skinny, weak, impulsive, ugly, tomboy, poor, rebel, loud, freak, crazy - turned out to be my greatest strengths. I didn't become successful in spite of them. I became successful because of them.
We know that people are less open in conversations if the other conversant puts a cell phone on the table. Even if it's turned off. The sign is enough to close the mind and make a prospective client or lover less likely to do what you ask. As people realize this, they'll start putting away phones or turning them off.
I grew up in a house my parents built together on a mountain in Tennessee. When we moved in, the walls were still going up, we didn't have hot water, and we turned it into an amazing adventure.
I don't own a cell phone. I've never turned on a computer in my life.
I made the choice to have the double mastectomy, and for me it felt like the right choice, and it turned out to be the right choice.
I can't think of anything that I turned down that became big and successful.
My first song was 'So Sick,' which was my first number one as an artist, and I turned the mic around to the crowd, and they sang the whole song. Every lyric. That was my first experience with the power of music.
I always liken myself to the bearded lady. Because I'm an actress turned musician, a woman doing male-dominated rock & roll... I'm the oddity at the freak show, you know?
I started experimenting with jewelry in my 20s - I was playing around with gemstones and painting things in gold leaf, and it turned into this huge obsession for me, so I launched my first jewelry line, Jade Inc.
Fiction writers have long turned to winter to advance bluer palettes, slicker surfaces, and sharper contrasts. The sky darkens, the wind picks up, and flakes start to fall. Horizons shrink. Couples bicker. Cars slide off roads. Obliteration tends to loiter between the sentences.
I can play the trumpet. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. I started young and got to grade seven. When I turned 13, everyone started whipping out guitars, looking cool and joining rock bands, so I stopped playing.
I almost turned down '8 Mile.' I was due to start 'ER,' and I learned they really wanted me to be in '8 Mile.' I didn't know Eminem; I just knew he was a rapper and saw what everyone else saw in the media. I thought they were just trying to capitalize on his popularity.
Mugabe's become a disgrace to Africa. And I must say this because I am an African and a lot of us looked up to him back in the 1980s when he was the liberation hero. But he's now turned himself into a murderous despot.
My parents were no ordinary people. My mother turned Gandhian, and my father was a staunch communist. They named me after the great saint as a symbol of communal harmony.
I had a bad stutter when I was really young. I couldn't get a sentence out. Like, 'D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ad.' And that turned into a mumble.
My brother and I had a lot of freedom growing up, and thankfully, we both turned out OK.
I was backstage at the House of Blues in L.A where I was about to perform, and Stevie Wonder and Prince turned up at my dressing room together! Stevie started beat boxing and Prince started singing one of my songs, all of a sudden it was like I was in a cypher with these incredible artists.
I went through real darkness, but the ring was my light. That was the one place I felt safe. I could control what happened in the ring. My heart turned icy.
I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director.
Celador always ask me to do their shows, and I turned down 'Millionaire.' I couldn't have done it as well as Chris Tarrant, or at least I couldn't have done it any better.
I was weirdly obsessed with music until I was 11, and then I turned into a nerd.
I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B' the summer after I turned 21.
