I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around.
I think I'm just like a lot of people who had nothing. We had to amuse ourselves, so we had to become amusing.
Probably my favorite piece of music, as an album taken as a whole, is Bruce Springsteen's 'Greetings from Asbury Park.' I just think it's incredibly pure. It's a sound that sort of broke new ground, and I think it paved the way for a hundred people that sound very similar.
I am just the most boring person you will ever meet. I'm the good Southern daughter. I'm not outrageous.
I never talk much about my family, but my grandfather was friendly with these guys, with magicians and ventriloquists on the highest levels, and I was just... interested.
I was so grateful to have made 'Into the Wild' before I made 'Speed Racer' because on 'Speed Racer' I was indoors every single day, every single scene, on a green screen. Some of the time, just to pass the time, I would think back to climbing mountains in Alaska. That really helped me.
I feel like in a lot of ways I can relate to the fans, just being a fan of music myself.
When I get old, I'm going to the old folks' home. I don't want to be one of those guys who's hanging around the house bothering the kids. But not just any old folks' home. I want the whole top floor.
At school I was very shy and coincidentally inherited the title 'little miss worry guts,' and that was just among the staff. I learned early on that I could make people laugh, and as my small neat body betrayed me by growing to dizzying heights, I used it as a tool that translated into complete slap-stick comedy.
People in love don't see gender, colour or religion. Or age. It's about the other person, the one that you love and who loves you. You don't think of them in terms of a label. You just go with your heart.
I'm actually from Mt. Kisco, New York, which is in Westchester County, and when I auditioned for 'Dukes,' I told them I was from Snailville, Georgia, which doesn't exist, and I'd just graduated first in my class from the Georgia School of High Performance Driving, which also doesn't exist. But they bought it.
I kept extensions in until I finished high school. Although, once I got to college, that's when it all started to shift. I think it was just growing up and moving to New York, where I saw so many different people, vibes, and looks, and everyone really owned it. That led me to feel more free, take more risks, and go back into my natural hair.
I just played at a club in L.A. called the Baked Potato. It fits like 90 people. It's like playing somewhere in a basement in, like, Indiana or somewhere where all your friends show up. It's really fun and there's a very different energy to that than to play to 50,000 at a Tokyo baseball stadium.
It kind of pays off to try your best at every audition; you never know what can happen. You can get a hundred nos, but if you just get one yes, it can change your life.
There's nothing wrong with being an innovator, but how do you innovate? Are you just destroying the place, or are you protecting the place?
If you care about your product, you should care just as much about how you describe it.
Nothing changes overnight unless you win an Oscar. You move up a little bit, but you are always a little fish - just in a slightly bigger pond.
I've always slightly preferred Spade to Marlowe, probably just because I thought Hammett was cooler than Chandler. He was leftwing, his name shortened to Dash rather than Ray, and he didn't smoke a pipe or like cats.
I think there are nice things about every era. I wish we could just take the nice things.
If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.
Taxes are just too high - that's obviously a priority.
Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I think the ordinary guy has just as much right to say 'This is a good song' as somebody who is in the music business.
I find it slightly uncomfortable to see my face on a bus or a poster. I like just being known by my friends and family.
The press always causes a certain amount of hesitance for people who are considering entering public life. So simply encouraging women to enter politics, on any level, not just on the state level, is extremely important.
I'm just not very interested in decoration.
It seems like a gross waste of time to continue our career predicated on the idea that we're going to divide opinion. What's more important is just doing something that you love.
I don't really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.
Everybody wants to look in the mirror and see Cary Grant looking back at them, but that's just not the case.
It doesn't take much for anyone to pick up anything I play - it's quite simple. I go for a good song. And if you hear a good song, you don't dissect it - you just listen, and every bit seems right.
My husband is my part of my greatest joys, so it doesn't feel like work or like I'm balancing anything. My husband and my kids absolutely come first, so work is just something where I figure out where it will fit.
I have friends come over and we read plays out loud and I make paintings and I just do things all the time just so I don't ever feel like I'm sitting around.
Just as two people can have similar personalities, two companies can have a remarkably similar approach to business.
Once a month, I get together with my girlfriends and we usually check into a hotel or go to someone else's house. We can talk for 15 hours, and it just flies by.
I take certain steps to make sure I'm relevant artistically. I always have new music and a reason to be on the road. I'm not just playing 'Get By' over and over. I have 12 albums.
Food makes me happy. Make me work round the clock, but just feed me first!
Effective listening is something that can absolutely be learned and mastered. Even if you find attentive listening difficult and, in certain situations, boring or unpleasant, that doesn't mean you can't do it. You just have to know what to work on.
