I saw hell. The hospital had divided and conquered pretty successfully.
I used to watch 'The Waltons' and sob because my family was nothing like that. We had a cruel sense of humor in my family.
I have learned how to breathe, to use my cords differently. I had been tilting my head in a way when I talked that wasn't good for my throat. I've been working on all of that, and it seems to be helping.
Have fun. Do something nobody else had done before, or has done since.
Fame had brought me so much unhappiness.
I did Lassie for six years and I never had anybody come up to me and say, 'It made me want to be a farmer.'
Once I had all the attention, all I had to do was deliver.
Are ideals confined to this deformed experiment upon a noble purpose, tainted, as it is, with bargains and tied to a peace treaty which might have been disposed of long ago to the great benefit of the world if it had not been compelled to carry this rider on its back?
On several occasions President Kennedy encouraged me to take a lover, an obvious sign he also had some himself.
For me, personally, life in South Africa had come to an end. I had been lucky in some of the whites I had met. Meeting them had made a straight 'all-blacks-are-good, all-whites-are-bad' attitude impossible. But I had reached a point where the gestures of even my friends among the whites were suspect, so I had to go or be forever lost.
I was initially assigned to the American Consulate in Aden, not as Principal Officer but as a supernumerary officer to handle Yemen affairs. We had no resident diplomatic mission in Yemen at the time. People from Aden went up to Yemen regularly.
I've certainly had to go through trying to change the fact that I was always identified as the widow of Notorious B.I.G. You know, I'm never going to be able to get away from having been married to him, but that's not what identifies me. You know, my life isn't just about that.
We used to have a main female vocalist. But she had a baby. Now we do the singing ourselves.
When I'm singing or on stage, I become complete all of a sudden. I'm whole. I don't think I've really had that in so many other things in my life.
About 1930, our laboratory had obtained a large concave grating and set it up in a Runge-Paschen mounting.
Certainly Nancy Reagan had an extraordinary effect on her husband. I'm truly not sure that, say, Laura Bush had that much effect on the Bush administration. She certainly, you know, seems to be a nice person who I think the public likes. But I can't really put my finger on any huge impact she's had.
The two times I had nervous breakdowns in my life were when I graduated from college and had my first kid.
I'd been round the world a hundred times and had started to forget where I'd been. I knew I'd been there: it said it on the tour map. I could remember the name of the city but I couldn't remember what it was like - it was a massive blur.
I had to realize that the use of samples has its rules, too.
I always had a philosophy which I got from my father. He used to say, 'Listen. God gave to you the gift to play football. This is your gift from God. If you take care of your health, if you are in good shape all the time, with your gift from God no one will stop you, but you must be prepared.'
I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.
If I had gone to drama school, I wouldn't be sitting here now because it would have blanded me out; it would have just turned me into another actor.
It had to happen to me sometime: sooner or later, I would have to lose sight of the cutting edge. That moment every technical person fears - the fall into knowledge exhaustion, obsolescence, techno-fuddy-duddyism - there was no reason to think I could escape it forever.
I had the opportunity to be around my kids a lot. I guess I could have kept working, but I had them when I was 47. You only get to see all this stuff once. I just chose to work at home and watch them.
The partnership over the 28 years we had the company afforded him the opportunity to experiment and live his life as an artist and a label honcho and do what he wanted to do. It afforded me the same opportunity.
You can't escape the taste of the food you had as a child. In times of stress, what do you dream about? Your mother's clam chowder. It's security, comfort. It brings you home.
The last movie I did, I was very lucky: I got to work with probably the best actor of our era, Billy Bob Thornton. He's just incredible. I was like a sponge: I soaked up everything he had to say.
I had someone correct my grammar once on a blind date, and within the first 10 minutes the date was over. You just don't correct somebody's grammar. That's just not okay. I'm from Tennessee, so I probably say everything wrong. I might have said 'ain't,' or something like that.
The repercussions of what you put out and what people gravitate to in your music never registered at all. I never had that thing that maybe other bands have - a specific idea of what they are and what their sound is.
Our choice of a reform framework dictated that we looked at the fundamental assumptions that had driven Nigeria's economy, society and policy hitherto and to seek ways of either abandoning or transcending those assumptions and their supporting institutions.
I was an only child. We were so poor, my parents and I had the same room.
I thought, If I'm so afraid of a bikini, there's something wrong. And so I had to get back into one!
My whole life I've had the fear that I was going to be abandoned.
If you had told me 28 years ago that the largest organization in the world touching the lives of gays and lesbians would be a church, I would not have believed you.
I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.
My mom brought me up on old Hollywood. I had been living in Los Angeles, respecting old movies and growing up with people that were icons that I got to speak to.
