I once literally had a casting director ask my agent, 'Can she play anything other than a drunk?'
When I left Europe in 1987 I did so with the thought that my relevance as a composition teacher would benefit from a certain cool distance to certain tendencies I had been observing for several years with increasing disquiet.
I loved writing the Spellman novels, but I never had any plan to only write in one genre.
I thought that if one wanted to be a writer, one had to write novels because I didn't know that one could be a poet.
I guess if I had to pick one interest that is unique, it would be giant squids - I'm disturbingly fascinated by them and even wrote a story about the hunt for them.
When the Second World War finished, I was 23, and already I had seen enough horror to last me a lifetime. I'd seen dreadful, dreadful things, without saying a word. So seeing horror depicted on film doesn't affect me much.
My doctor suggested doing some blood tests and immediately discovered that my white blood cell count was low. So then I went through many more tests including bone marrow biopsies until they figured out that I had neutropenia.
Governments allocate enormous resources for social programs. And it is true that for many years we have had one of the best social service systems in the world. Yet we are still incapable of meeting the needs of tens of thousands of Canadian families.
People call me an instinctive actor. I used to consider that an insult early on, only because I had never studied. Now... I love it.
When I was living in Mexico and writing a book called 'Aztec,' I had to make a deliberate effort to ignore a lot of the 'typically Mexican landscape' around me - banana and citrus groves, roses and carnations, burros and toros - because they did not exist in Mexico in the 15th century, the time of my book.
In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we'd go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father's televised service for 17 years.
When you look at women who have had plastic surgery, they have lost something - usually an expression, something unique to their face.
I have grown up in Delhi in a way, and I keep coming here often. But, and I am sorry to say, I'll always be nervous when in Delhi. In my college days, I have had my bum pinched around so many times. So yes, in Mumbai, I can just walk around and do what I want to do, but in Delhi I'll always be scared.
I was more in opposition within my own party, and for a long while, I was part of the opposition. I had - Scoop Jackson was my candidate in '76. I made no bones about that.
'Stargate' has always had this empty hole. When we made the first one, we always intended on doing part two and three, and we were prevented for years. And our hope is that we can get another chance at 'Stargate' and tell the entire story we wanted to tell.
Facebook is about sharing experiences that you've had. Foursquare is more about the present tense and the future tense.
I was listening to one of my favorite songs that Phil wrote and had an extreme emotional moment just before I got the news of his passing. I took that as a special spiritual message from Phil saying goodbye. Our love was and will always be deeper than any earthly differences we might have had.
I wasn't always interested in technology. I had been a student for a long time - I'd earned a bachelor's degree, a law degree, and an MBA - and decided that I wanted to work in a large corporation, focusing on finance and law, in either New York or Chicago.
I no longer have the terrible nightmares that I used to have. Mao had just died in 1976, and China began to open up. For the first time scholarships to go to the West to study were awarded on academic merit.
I went to something like six different schools before the age of 12, so I was always the new girl and had to make friends quickly. It was difficult at the start because I was very bookish - I was literally sat in the corner reading books, with no friends.
AIDS had won gays sympathy; they no longer seemed the privileged brats that the general populace had resented in the 1970s.
I often think of the different ways Goethe and Darwin got at evolution. Goethe had the poetic conception of it all right; Darwin worked it out step by step. Who's ahead? And which has any business scoffing at the other?
Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.
There are vivid memories from my childhood - what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose, if I wanted to be fair, I could say that I'm trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers.
I had a major bug for cities and for paintings and literature and all the things I thought went on in cities.
Nothing has run smoothly with me throughout my life. Everything has had ups and downs and lefts and rights, and that's just the way it has panned out for me, unfortunately.
I have such a soft spot for the really cheesy zombie movies, but if I had to pick a really good one, I'd have to go with an actual TV show and say 'The Walking Dead'.
I grew up in Mississippi, and there's no fashion game there. Even in 'Bling Ring,' I had to learn a lot about fashion - you know, the differences between lapels - and it wasn't until we'd wrapped that I really started getting into it.
The leaders come up from the volunteers that do the work, and it's amazing because then they do these incredible things in their community that they never thought they had the power to make that happen.
I was invited to L.A. when I was 16 for a weekend-long songwriting session by a writer I had met through my voice teacher in Pittsburgh. My first hit, 'Hide Away,' was one of the songs written during those sessions. It was played for a radio rep who then started a new label; the song got a pretty organic start at radio and then took off.
The records in the house I really remember were, well, Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman' and 'Galveston.' Even as a kid, I knew these songs were glorious. My dad also had records by Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, Waylon Jennings, and then there was also the Eagles and Don Henley. Anything Texas, which includes Don Henley, was big.
I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.
I was in art school since I was five years old. I've always been to art school. Everything that's happened to me, nothing's been planned. I've never had a business plan. I just kind of fell into it, and I liked it, and I took a chance. I took a lot of chances in my life.
Social media has allowed fans and celebrities to really engage and have an organic interaction with each other. Ever since I've had the opportunity to use social media, all the way back to the days of chat rooms, I found I was able to really understand what the fans wanted, communicate with them, and share my lifestyle.
My favorite days were when I had a cold and could stay home from school and draw all day long.
I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.
