Allen Ginsberg was a world authority on the writing of William Blake, and had an incredible knowledge of classic literature and world politics.
'Angus' was my first real film, but I had been acting for about 3 threes before that as well.
I view the experiences that I have had - both tough ones and the pleasant ones - as gifts. They've been full of lessons. And I've learned to be open to those lessons.
On first listen, it's nice to just soak up the sound without thinking about what it means. It's like a relationship. Records I've had for years mean more to me now than they did years ago.
Although as a boy I had dreamed about going into space, I had completely forgotten about that until one day I received a call from an astronaut, who suggested that I should join the program.
Even if a university should turn out to be another version of a school, I had decided I could lose myself afterwards as an anonymous particle of the London I already loved.
For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian.
I have never, ever slept through my child crying unless I have had a sleeping tablet; and I only take a sleeping tablet when I know Steve, my husband, is on duty. We take turns: he does one night, I do the next.
Our parents were very strict. Not in a brutal or awful way, but there were definite rules, such as after six on a school night you didn't go out, and at weekends you had to be home by a certain time. It wasn't particularly sheltered, but we were well brought-up.
I had a great many sex and love cases where people were absolutely devastated when somebody with whom they were compulsively in love didn't love them back. They were killing themselves with anxiety and depression.
It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.
My dad, as a guy, had to quit school in the ninth grade, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And spent his life pushing wheel barrels of heavy wet cement. So we've gone from pushing cement to now in one generation pushing legislation. But we always want any president to succeed, to do well; that means America does well and Americans do well.
I had to give everything I had to one event if I wanted to excel.
I think the most privacy I had was when the game was going on.
I thought 'Arnold Layne' was a nice name and fitted well into the music I had already composed. Then I thought, 'Arnold must have a hobby,' and it went from there.
When I was 13 I had a fake Id that said that I was 19. I was getting in all the clubs.
Just as the Russians and the Soviets didn't manage to wipe out languages in Lithuania, neither have they managed to wipe out religion to the extent that we had feared.
I kept auditioning, with no savings and no money, credit card debt gaining interest. I went on unemployment. I bought ramen noodles at dollar stores. I never had to - God forbid - live on the streets.
I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept it without wishing I had given it away.
If Greece had gone through a very normal political life, I may have not been in politics. But just the fact that I lived through huge upheavals and very difficult struggles and polarization and the barbarism of dictatorships - that made me feel that we had to change this country.
I just couldn't take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that's about all I did at school.
People say I've had brushes with the law. That's not true. I've had brushes with overzealous prosecutors.
I still had some honor... I still have some now.
My grandparents used to pray five times a day, but they were quiet about their own thing. Completely liberal day by day; my grandmother was a social worker and my grandfather was an engineer, but they never talked about religion. My entire life I couldn't remember one conversation I had with them about religion.
Some of the most moving experiences I've had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.
I surrounded myself with women when I was growing up because I had this horrible psycho father. Now I'm trying to really appreciate and like men more.
When I got married in my twenties, I had a happy marriage and happy kids but at some point in time I let it go off the rails; I let it go off the rails.
Grissom comes from a place where we know he had a deaf mother, he was raised in a silent household, on some level, had a father who potentially was not around and he learned what he knew by himself in the back yard, with bugs and animals. He's not comfortable being a supervisor and that's his problem.
You know that thing when you're not asleep but you're not awake, and you can't move your body? I had that kind of nightmare, and I felt like all my teeth were crumbling in my mouth. Now I have this fear of all my teeth being knocked out of my mouth somehow!
I grew with it, and I used to go to see the monks, who had no possessions, even more extreme than my mother.
I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.
I was really conflicted. I had always planned to help the world. Instead, I was going to become an actress? That seemed like such a selfish thing to do.
I left 'Dr Who' after 18 months, as my character was going nowhere. In truth, I wished I had never gone into it. Afterwards, all the scripts that came my way were for 15-year olds.
It's not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.
I wish I had been more prepared, both for success and for failure, when I was younger.
When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.
