My folks were drunks, and I had a rough childhood - really rough - in fact, rougher than I thought about.
When 'Deadwood' ended, I thought, 'I'll never have this again, ever.'
I had always thought my fantasy career would be making indie films and doing my own thing. But then 'Superbad' came along, and it totally changed everything. It was so hilarious and smart and extreme; you could probably do a psychoanalysis term paper on the male sexual psyche going on there.
Why can't the world be like a summer day, when I thought that health care would be an ethical decision and wars existed only to be stopped?
I grew up with deaf teachers, and I thought all deaf children should have exposure to deaf educators.
I never saw anything more like real warfare in my life - only the attack was all on one side. The police, in spite of their numbers, apparently thought they could not cope with the crowd.
I thought I was okay in my first film, and then I was really, really bad in some films. I really cringe when I see some of my scenes. There's a scene in one film where a dog is biting me; the expressions I have made should be qualified as the most over-acted scene in the history of the cinema. The dog's expressions were more real than mine.
I know I have a caption that I'm going to use when somebody tells me something I've never heard before. It's very rarely a thought, a philosophy, when somebody says, 'Oh, I don't like cheese' or 'Oh, I think the government should be overthrown,' because so many people share these thoughts. But what people don't share is stories.
When I was very young I never thought I was attractive, because I was a tomboy and I was always the biggest girl in the class.
I always thought that I would spend the first half of my life making money so I can spend the second half of my life giving it all away. And one of the defining moments of my life was when I realized that I could do both at the same time with TOMS.
I wanted to fold into the 'Hellraiser' narrative something about the guy - the Frenchman Lemarchand - who made the mysterious box, which raises Pinhead. I figured, 'Well, what would have happened to him?' He might well have been taken to Devil's Island, and I thought that would be a pretty cool place to start the movie.
The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself.
I thought I sang - it's OK - it's so hard to sing! Singing - I had no idea. I'd get fatigued at the end of a phrase - the amount of respect I have for singers!
We were bemused, I guess, when we got the call from Hollywood. We didn't know anything about the entertainment industry or even what a casting agency was. But I thought, 'What do I have to lose?' It's not every day a great opportunity presents itself.
You can't be an entrepreneur for other people. You can't start a company for other people. You have to love it more than you ever thought of loving something that wasn't a human being. The demands will kick you down and rob your life - but yet, it is so rewarding.
I was happy being a lawyer, and the thought of becoming a model or even actor never came to my mind, even though I knew I looked good.
I have always been the first on the dance floor. Before fame, people thought it made me a good laugh; now, people point and call me an attention seeker! I'm very aware of the way people can view me, but I'm very aware that I have to just enjoy my life.
When you receive a cancer diagnosis, you're more vulnerable than at any other time in your life. I've personally had the experience twice. My only hope for survival was alternatives. But that was my decision, what I thought was best for me.
I refuse the compliment that I think like a man, thought has no sex, one either thinks or one does not.
Everybody think they're an outsider - that word's over! When I was young, being an outsider, I thought it was a bad thing you didn't want to be.
I never thought, when I was a kid, that there was a sense of competition or animosity towards poor blacks. I just thought there was a recognition that they lived differently - they primarily lived on the other side of town. And we're both poor, but that's kind of it. There wasn't much explicit statement of kinship or of the lack of kinship.
He was not like Greek fathers. He didn't tell us to get married. My father thought it was very important that we travel, learn languages, be educated.
When I began I thought that literature was contained within a bubble that somehow floated above the world commented upon by newspapers. But I became more and more interested in trying to include some of that world within my work.
As I got older, I was able to articulate why I was rebelling against authority - because their motives were much more forceful and hurtful than I had ever thought.
It's a good giggle to look back at yourself in your 20s. You thought you were so fierce and fabulous, and it's just embarrassing.
March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month. Don't feel bad if you did not know that. I didn't, either, until someone recently slapped a picture of a green ribbon and a message wishing me a 'Happy CP Awareness Month' on my Facebook page. I always thought March was Women's History Month.
I would watch films like 'Frances Ha' and 'The Squid and the Whale,' and wonder why we weren't making these beautiful slice-of-life movies. Then I thought, 'Why am I not doing it?'
I was young; I was newly married. My Cambridge degree was still warm in my pocket - a roll of parchment guaranteeing me, I thought, a sort of free ambassadorial passage to any campus of my choosing, and I had chosen Sydney - the world was all before me.
When I knew nothing, I thought I could do anything.
I wanted to be Cher for a long time, but not for the singing. I just thought she was so cool. I wanted her long hair, and I wanted to weigh five pounds.
All I wanted was to be a regional-theater actor, to be in a company. I thought it would be a great life. I don't think I understood how difficult it would be.
I thought of Jeff Bridges in 'Hell or High Water' and Ben Foster, and I kept trying very hard not to, because you're terrified you're going to write this thing that then feeds specifically to this one person that then won't do it.
Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words.
I made music with my friend, who we called Isabella Machine to which I was Florence Robot. When I was about an hour away from my first gig, I still didn't have a name, so I thought 'Okay, I'll be Florence Robot/Isa Machine', before realising that name was so long it'd drive me mad.
I never thought I would do a game show, but now I guess I'm now officially in that genre.
I've always thought it was important not to attach too much superstition to the space where you're writing, because once you get into the mindset that you can only do it a certain way in a certain place, your creativity can get blocked.
