I have this idealistic and maybe naive thought that almost any song can be anything. If you record one song today, it would maybe be exciting and cool. But I could record the same song next week and it would be something completely different.
When I heard 'Moon River', at first I thought it was just a nice song, but then I started paying attention to the words and realized this song was about Huck Finn. I just love the words, that it's kind of you and me against the world, and we're going to make it together.
Wall Street's outsized influence in our nation's capital is something I've talked about for a long time - long before I even thought about running for office. But where I see a problem - an infestation, really - a lot of others in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to see government working just fine.
What is wine? It is the grape present in another form; its essence is there, though the fruit which produced it grew thousands of miles away, and perished years ago. So the object of many a tender thought may be spiritually present, in defiance of space - and fond recollections cherished in defiance of time.
Misconception Number 1, the public always thought, 'Reggie has a massive ego; he's narcissistic, he's cocky, he needs everyone to look at him all the time,' because that's what the media told them. Wrong. I could handle the attention. I didn't let the attention affect my performance. But I never needed the attention.
I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.'
My husband has a cousin who discovered, in his fifties, that the man he thought was his father was actually not, and that he had not only a father he had never met, but brothers.
I trained in medicine in India, and after that, I chose psychiatry as my specialty, much to the dismay of my mother and all my family members who kind of thought neurosurgery would be a more respectable option for their brilliant son.
When AIDS first appeared, people didn't know what it was. You'll remember that it affected mostly young gay men - it was actually called GRID for a short period of time: Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Syndrome - and people thought it actually might be recreational drugs or other types of toxins.
There's something about wearing clothes that your great-grandmother might have thought were nice that makes you look older.
I always wanted to meet Nelson Mandela, and I have friends who knew him, but I didn't get to meet Mandela. I always thought he was a spectacular character.
I wanted everybody to like me. I thought I was one shuck and jive away in every direction.
I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing... like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.
I will always believe in love, but my idea has changed from what I've always thought.
I feel that I fell somewhat under that category where I was using fighting to kind of run from my own self to an extent, to kind of numb the things that I thought about myself. When I had fighting taken away, I was forced to look at myself in the mirror and say, 'What are you without fighting?'
Once 9/11 happened, people who looked like me and whose children looked like us and whose husbands looked of a community, really were made to feel quite the other, and I thought that was impossible in a city like New York but I myself was witness to that.
You know, I was the class clown in Catholic school, but I never thought I would make a living out of it!
I find that I'm constantly drawing. Even when I'm on holidays or when the baby's sleeping, I'll just start doing some automatic drawing, something like that, and then it will turn into a piece, even though I thought I was just doodling.
I don't come from an artistic family, so I didn't know what theater was. I was working on Wall Street in the '90s, and I went to see 'Appointment With a High-Wire Lady' at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and it affected me so deeply. It changed everything I thought about the arts. I quit banking and became an actor.
I thought back to my middle-school experience of having slumber parties and watching Romeo + Juliet and staring at Leo and thinking about my first kiss and what I wanted it to be like. And when you have your first real love, it's an epiphany, you know? It's like a whole new world.
I've always thought about myself as somewhat of a folk musician. I just write words. I don't think I'm even a musician. I don't play a lot of instruments, not really a soloist or anything.
I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city.
I always wanted to be the pretty girl, but I thought I wasn't. When I started acting and getting pretty girl roles, I felt like I was just pretending, and nobody saw I was just this big nerd.
I thought the Hall of Fame was for superstars, not just average players like me.
At one time I thought the Editor of the Lancet would kindly publish a letter from me on the subject, but further reflection led me to doubt whether so insignificant an individual would be noticed without some special introduction.
My brother was diagnosed with autism at age 2. At the time, I was young, so I didn't really understand what it all meant. The doctors thought there was a possibility my brother wouldn't be able to speak - he was diagnosed on the severe end of the spectrum.
We know their names: Hippolyta, Antiope, Thessalia. But they were long thought to be just travelers' tales or products of the Greek storytelling imagination. A lot of scholars still argue that. But archaeology has now proven without a doubt that there really were women fitting the description that the Greeks gave us of Amazons and warrior women.
Living in a capital in Europe but still surrounded by mountains and ocean, my relationship to music was strongest walking to school and back. I would sing to myself and very quickly started mapping out my melodies to landscapes - at the time I just thought it was very matter of fact, a common thing to do.
I wrote 'Monster' and thought that it would solve a lot of my problems, that I'd have money in the bank, but I felt no different. I was still searching for something.
After I left college I thought, very naively, that either you became someone interesting - an artist - or you went into academia. If you ended up in an office you were dull and lacking. And I ended up in an office.
I was definitely planning to go to college, but I deferred my admission to Carnegie Mellon to be in a non-equity tour of 'The Sound of Music.' But I made very little money in the tour, and college is really expensive, and I thought I'd never be able to pay off those loans.
And all the zig-zags and lines in my hair? I used to do that myself. I just thought it was cool that you could actually do that with your hair.
My junior year, I went to an LSAT-prep course. I flipped over my test and thought, 'You bastards.' I walked out and went to Waffle House. That's where I had what I call 'The Waffle House Epiphany': I didn't want to be a lawyer. I wanted to make a dent in the universe.
I was scouted at a Cure concert. A model scout approached me there and asked me if I modeled, and I thought that was ludicrous.
The thought of making a movie in which the monsters were the good guys was just financial suicide.
'Wonder Showzen' is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn't know comedy could do that. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.