My dad didn't have a formal education, but he had a wonderful vocabulary. So in 'Harvest,' I wanted my main character to be an innately intelligent man who would have the vocabulary to say whatever he wanted in the same way as lots of working-class people can.
I wanted to disprove the notion that you couldn't open a great restaurant in a casino.
I want to show every part of me and every color of me. And I think, growing up Albanian, I wanted to bring that to light.
The sense of not knowing where I came from let me be as smart as I wanted to be.
When my kids were growing up, I wanted their teachers to teach them science, reading, math and history. I also wanted them to care about my kids. But I did not want my children's public school teachers teaching them religion. That was my job as a parent and the job of our church, Sunday school, and youth group.
When we decided to go to Cuba to perform, we did it because we just wanted to build a bridge, you know, between Cuba and the rest of the community. And we just wanted to prove that music and art need to be over all ideology or way to think life, and we just wanted to go in there and play just because of love.
Nobody in this country is on Social Security because they made the decision when they were starting work at 14 that they wanted to trust some of their money with the government. The government took it out of their check whether they wanted them to or not.
I like having black hair. When I was really young, I wanted to be Asian - Asian hair is beautiful. I also wanted to look like the girl in George Michael's 'Father Figure' video.
I came from a happy family with loving parents, so my associations with marriage and children were all happy, positive things that brought me comfort as a child, which I wanted in my life.
I wanted to be a lawyer. Then a journalist. Actually, I graduated from university as a journalist.
I never wanted a life of having a nice house, driving around, settling down.
I wanted to be a child actor so bad that every day I'd beg my parents if I could audition, but my mom said, 'Not until you can drive yourself to auditions.'
I got to do Disney Sunday movies. I got to do a TV pilot there. And it really helped me to realise that I needed to not just be a writer, but a producer, to see my work up on the screen the way I wanted it to look and play.
When I wanted to audition for a dinner-theater junior troupe in my hometown, I needed to have a piece of musical theater music to sing. I wasn't sure what I wanted to use. My mom and dad suggested that I sing 'Edelweiss' because I knew it from the music box.
When I was playing for my school, the only thing I wanted to do was get selected for the Under-16 or the Under-19 district teams. When I was selected for the district, I would think about the next level, which was getting selected for the state side.
Obviously I always wanted to do a contemporary piece.
I like to be someone else. I like to be someone other than myself. I grew up watching movies and being a fan of what I'd seen portrayed in the movies, and I always wanted to do that one day.
There was a point - when I was a kid - where I said I wanted to be like Luke Skywalker, with blond hair and blue eyes. My mom right there told me to never be ashamed of who I am.
A lot of people say I've missed out on a lot because I started acting at such a young age. What's so obvious to me is that I actually was really lucky. I gained a lot and I got a head start in what I wanted to do in life. A lot of people in their late 20s, early 30s are just beginning to figure out where they want to go.
When I started producing, it was George Abbott directing and he would let me do the scenery. He just wanted to know where the doors were - the entrances, the exits; the tables, the props - and then I would hire the designer. I took charge of the visuals - scenery and costumes and so on. And, the shows looked wonderful.
I knew that all South Indian language films were first made in Chennai and that Tamil Nadu is one of the biggest film-producing centres in the country. I wanted to be part of films here.
I always liked Nat King Cole. I always wanted to go my own way, but I always favoured other singers like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald - I loved Ella Fitzgerald. There are so many of them. Nina Simone was one of my favourites - Johnny Mathis.
I wanted to work with people from the world, with different minds and different visions.
At some point in my life, I wanted to be in a vampire movie.
I wanted to be involved in TV and film in some capacity, so a compromise, because acting seemed unrealistic, and so risky, was to get into the production side. And it was a really fortunate, smart move looking back on it, because it gave me perspective on another side of the business.
But I was very disappointed that I didn't get a chance to go overseas with that group, might not have gotten back but I wanted very much to go because there's not much of a record of the exploits of the first Negro fighter group.
It's funny, because '1600 Penn' was the first time I really started to read the reviews, because I am an executive producer and I wanted to see what people were enjoying and not enjoying as a means to an end, right?
My dad dying was actually a reason for me to stop music properly for about a year, because he was a big supporter. All I wanted to do was write a song about him and, you know, when something's too fresh, you can't quite word it.
I was told that if I wanted to be a leading man in Hollywood, I couldn't possibly be thought of as gay.
I wanted to reveal how genetic code is translated into protein. I knew a great application could be for antibiotics, since half of the useful ones target the ribosomes, but I didn't believe I could contribute to it. It was like the next Mount Everest to conquer. It was my dream to contribute something to humanity.
My father came from a country called Bolivia. He was of Spanish descent. I never went to Bolivia until I was 60 years old, but apparently when he was 17, he had already planned his entire academic curriculum so that he could graduate high school and enter college in the United States. That's how much he wanted to come to this country.
I went to a modeling agency and said I wanted to be a model. I worked, worked, worked so much while I was studying.
I wanted to be a cool mom. It was hectic. I felt very isolated for a long time, but in the end, it was cool because it helped me and Ninja stick together. If we hadn't, we would have maybe drifted.
I think it was in Moscow last year and I got changed for training the day before we played Moscow, but the fact is they actually wanted to do John's, me and John were next to each other and they did mine by mistake. John had done them I think. So yeah it is true.
It was one of those early mid-life crises, really. I started asking myself, 'What is it that I want from my life?' This question kept haunting me: 'Do I want to be a lawyer who always wanted to be a writer, or do I actually want to be a writer?
I was in New Zealand and met this girl. Her sister dared me to bungee jump, so I did! It was a spur-of-the-moment decision - I wanted to impress the girl, and it worked! We were in a relationship after that.
