I never made any money, but I had the best jobs in the world.
Going into 'Details' magazine to pitch concepts for a potential photo shoot was one of the most nerve-wracking things I had ever done. I didn't really know what one did in a pitch, how they were structured, etc., and that freaked me out big time.
I had business experience. I had made my living designing and building electronic equipment. Basic business was not new to me, but the music business was completely new to me. I knew nothing about distribution, or any of those things.
A friend of mine described it this way: When they were born it was like a meteor landed in our house and blew everything apart. We had to just put all the pieces back.
The strategy of my coach and me was that we looked at pictures of all the best pole vaulters from around the world, and we took the best parts from them, and we created a person that had never existed. We then started to work toward being such a person.
I think there's a sort of agony with all intelligent and very creative designers that it's only fashion, that in the end it's only the decorative arts. I had a feeling towards the end that Saint Laurent and Berge were very keen to attain that immortality that a lot of designers long for. You know, those endless exhibitions.
Boys have always known they could do anything; all they had to do was look around at their presidents, religious leaders, professional athletes, at the statues that stand erect in big cities and small. Girls have always known they were allowed to feel anything - except anger.
I've had a pretty charmed life, so there's nothing that I need to take too seriously right now.
My mother speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother's anxiety.
Have I had therapy? I went to a yoga class once.
There were some situations where I was giving up everything I had for the band and I just expected everybody else to feel the same way. I realized I was just kidding myself.
My mom always had me and my brother watching old Fred Astaire movies.
I very much enjoyed doing 'Law & Order,' playing a killer - that was fun, and they had a family feel around the set, so it was a happy show to do even though the subject matter was quite the opposite.
What I've realized, and had to become comfortable with, is that I'm just, I don't think, a star. I'm an actor.
I had never felt so lonely and so sad in my entire life.
I had no idea how I wanted to get into photography, but I just knew I wanted to do it.
I've always had a big personality. I was trickier as a kid. I behaved erratically instead of consistently. I would have tons of friends, and then I would have no friends. I'd be with the cool girls, then the uncool girls. I migrated from group to group because I was bored or people got bored with me. I was very intense.
Part of America is we've always had people that can get things done.
My parents went crazy when they found out that I had gotten the part in 'Conversations With My Father!' I'd never given acting a thought. They were proud of me and very encouraging.
Growing up as a kid, in elementary and middle school, I was always getting in trouble. Always getting suspended. I got suspended for 90 days for fighting beginning my freshman year, so I missed Homecoming, and that's when I turned the page. I went on honor roll and had good grades after that. It was the changing point.
I am quite a romantic person, really, and I should have put that into my music earlier, but I was probably denying it... I didn't want to be soft because I felt I had to be so hard to get people to believe in me.
I've had to work hard all my life, and I will never, ever ask a fan or reader to pay for something I've rushed. It's not fair to them, and I will never give them anything except my absolute best.
It's definitely a little bit ironic being known for my hair because, as a little girl, I had no idea what I was doing with it. I was insecure about it. I didn't have as many references to curly girls, and I wanted to just fit in with all my other friends.
My whole family actually, but my parents. I had such a normal and amazing childhood. I've been so lucky. My parents are cool and normal. They don't talk about the business and I still have stuff to do at their house.
We certainly had an upheaval at the start of the Great Depression, and that resulted in a lot of financial reform, but it wasn't done in one stroke, and it wasn't done immediately. The Depression was in 1929 and resulted in the Securities and Exchange Act of '33, '34, '35, '37, '39, and '41.
In '93 to '94, every browser had its own flavor of HTML. So it was very difficult to know what you could put in a Web page and reliably have most of your readership see it.
I never really got paid for 'Tell It Like Is,' but I look back at it and say God knew what he was doing; he probably figured that if I had got money back in them days, I wouldn't be here now. That's okay. I'm here. And I'm still singing the song.
I had an opportunity with Baltimore to make it to the World Series, and that didn't happen.
My mother had early-onset Alzheimer's, and it took her four years to die. She was only 44; I was 14.
Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.
I see my daft surname as a positive thing. It first dawned on me that I had a comical name when someone called me 'Fishface' on my first day at school. I've heard all the fish jokes since then, many times over.
I think what my father appreciated was the science experiment of life. He had these kids, and they had their own experiences. He wanted us to discover the world for ourselves.
I decided I was going to be in love. I was going to give it everything I had. It was like heaven on that ranch. I don't know why we broke up. We never fought.
I've had rooms that didn't come out to my liking.
I have never had too much trouble for creative ideas to spring up in my mind.
My Father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.
