The book I always say that influenced me, subconsciously, because at the time I didn't know I wanted to be a writer, was William Goldman's 'Marathon Man.' That was the first adult thriller that I loved. I read it when I was 15 or so, when my father gave it to me.
A woman in Mexico wanted me to heal her. But I can't heal anybody. I just put my hand on her and said, 'Thank you for seeing the film.'
I wanted to learn a few foreign languages, and therefore I had to go abroad.
Like the music and the period, I wanted 'I'm Not There' to be fun and full of emotions, desires and experiments that were thrilling and dangerous.
I wanted to tell my story because I believe that if I can inspire or motivate even 10 or 15 people to start losing weight, it's a very big achievement. If I've managed to do it, anybody can.
Well, I am from India and I wanted to make films in English for the international market in India. So that was really the main thing, and then of course economically it was cheaper to make films in India.
I knew exactly how I wanted it to play, but you are never sure until you watch the projected images reflect off the screen. That's when you know it worked.
Phil has always been a fighter. He was getting in fights all the time. I told him that if he ever hit me then I would leave the band. He wanted to find out if I was telling him the truth. He hit me so I left and that is how UFO split up.
After I graduated high school and came out to do 'Buffy,' I was enrolled at my mom's university, and I was going to go get a real job. I never thought of acting and never really wanted to be an actor.
I wanted to write it long before I wrote Every Night, Josephine! I'd been thinking about it a long time.
I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.
If you had asked me back in grade school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said my first choice was an actor, but if I couldn't be that, I'd want to be a superhero.
When I was very little, I probably wanted to be more normal. I probably wanted the Laura Ashley bedroom, and instead I got thrift-store everything.
Tammy Faye, I pray for every day. I really liked her. I wanted to be in their family.
I was 11 when I first said I wanted to become an actress, and everyone looked at me as if I had said I wanted to go to the moon.
I started doing science when I was effectively 20, a graduate student of Salvador Luria at Indiana University. And that was - you know, it took me about two years, you know, being a graduate student with Luria deciding I wanted to find the structure of DNA; that is, DNA was going to be my objective.
If I was doing a musical, I would never listen to the cast album, because I wanted to do my version of something.
More than specific memories of achievements, for me I remember the feeling you get when you were just at your very best - when you felt like you were floating across the court and could put the ball wherever you wanted.
I always wanted to experience what performance would be like without the fourth wall, so I formed a company in Australia, and we did avant-garde theater, playing with gender norms, conversations about race - we just had a box of issues that we wanted to subvert with our stories, with dance.
I never, ever had it in my mind that I wanted to be in the record industry, because I still contend that the record industry is an insidious affair. It's this terrible collision between art and commerce, and it will always be that way.
All I ever wanted to do was act.
'The X-Files' was a hard sell because people didn't know what it was. The network didn't understand what it was that they were buying, and at the beginning, they wanted us to have closure. They wanted us to put the cuffs on the bad guy at the end of each episode.
Besides all those whaling details, Moby Dick is about someone who's looking for something so huge, something they've wanted all their life, yet they know when they find it, it will kill them.
Ralph Fiennes was a pivotal influence on me. He asked me, 'So what is it you want to do?' I very shyly, timidly admitted that I wanted to be an actor. He sighed, and he said, 'Lupita, only be an actor if you feel there is nothing else in the world you want to do - only do it if you feel you cannot live without acting.'
It's different today than it was then. In those days we were strictly amateurs. If I had wanted to stay in for the '80 Olympics, my parents couldn't have afforded it.
When I was five years old, I told my parents that I wanted to take ballet. So, ballet was the focus of my life... until puberty. Then I discovered boys and started dating a guy with a mohawk who'd come to my ballet class and freak everybody out. Shortly after that is when I quit.
TLC always looked up to male bands. We saw guy groups could just go out and get the fans screaming by just standing there - fully clothed and with nothing but their music... We saw them as the competition more than the girl groups, with whom we wanted to stay unified.
It took me a long time to figure out how to act, and how to conduct myself in the business so I could get what I felt I needed to support my potential and give them what they wanted.
I wanted to be a columnist so badly that I took a huge pay cut to leave Forbes, which wouldn't give me a column, and join Newsday, which wanted my column for its Sunday business section.
When I was growing up I always wanted to be a waitress. My sister opened a restaurant in Mississippi, and I went down there and was a waitress for a few days. Let me tell you, I got it out of my system.
I wanted to make a black story about South Africa. Unfortunately, no producer in the United States would put one penny into a black story.
I always wanted to be a mom.
Now that I have retired, and even though I wanted to play more, I can always look back and say that at least I won Wimbledon; also, winning the tournament in Rotterdam in 1995.
I try not to and I don't think I ever have just jumped at any opportunity because a company wanted me. Just because there was money on the table doesn't mean that I took it.
Finally there was a moment when it just hit me. John wouldn't want me to sit on my butt for the rest of my life feeling sorry for myself or sorry for him. As cheesy as it sounds, he would have wanted us to go on.
I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I'm pig-headed.
