I was in Studio 54 one time; it was great. But I'm not a discotheque guy. Sometimes, if I had a new demo, I went to some discotheques to check it out - see how the reactions of the people were. But just to dance, I rarely did that.
If I had a big brother who was a year older than me or something, I probably wouldn't have ended up being a filmmaker.
I know it sounds trite but I wanted to make a difference. Political debates with my father had been fraught because he was uncompromising and explosive but if he taught me one thing it was to air my views.
I know who I am as an artist and I know what my sound is, but I wanted to know what I could do in order to take it to that next level. So the experiences I had last year of moving to California and traveling to places like Rome and Nicaragua where I met a lot of people just had a really big impact in my life.
The question is - did Richard Attenborough have a right to make 'Gandhi?' And did Danny Boyle have a right to make 'Slumdog Millionaire?' Quite honestly, if they didn't have the right to make these films, I had no right to make 'Elizabeth.'
There was a guy by the name of Charles Schwab: actually, Charles M. Schwab. I read a lot about him, and I always hoped I was related, but I wasn't. He was a steel magnate. He worked for J.P. Morgan; then he started Bethlehem Steel. But he had no children, unfortunately, and it turned out I wasn't a relative.
I grew up as a dancer, and music and dance are so closely tied that in ballet class, you're listening to all this classical music, and in modern class, you're working with a live drummer. It was something that always made me feel really comfortable, and I've had a connection to since the beginning.
I was raised by both parents up to 17. We had a good family. We had a middle class family, good teaching and good surroundings, raised by the church, where I went every week whether I wanted to or not.
In the necessary memorialisation of the six million dead, there had been precious little attention paid to those who survived and how they survived.
Years ago, when my attempts at a writing career came to a complete stand-still, I applied to the Los Angeles Police Department. This might seem odd for a liberal woman who once went to UC Santa Cruz, but I've always had a powerful fascination with crime and serious interest in finding different ways to contend with it.
I will direct one day. I need some more life experience before I feel like I can do something like that comfortably. It'd be a feature, it'd be something maybe that I had in writing as well.
I am really honoured, but if the prize had gone to Mahatma Gandhi before me, I would have been more honoured.
Until the absorption of the Polish territories, the Russian Empire had had practically no Jews, and it was uniquely ill-equipped to handle this new addition to its ethnic and religious mix.
I've never held myself up particularly high when I had movies that worked, and I never held myself all that low when I had failures.
When I was in high school, I started getting into Japanese wrestling. For me to watch those matches, I had to order VHS tapes through catalogues, and these tapes were, like, $20 each.
We've had nothing but support from everybody in the dance world for a National Dance Day.
The 'Story of Silent Night', which was given to me one Christmas when I was six - it was the story of a down and out composer who had no ideas left, and it was Christmas, and he came up with the hymn 'Silent Night.'
What had brought me to New York in the autumn of 1972 was a letter of recommendation written by Norman Mailer, the author of 'The Naked and the Dead' and American literature's leading heavyweight contender, to Dan Wolf, the delphic editor of 'The Village Voice.'
I had no education whatsoever, and my mother said, 'Oh, you'll get a much better education in life.' I did to some extent, though I always wish I could have tried it.
I always knew I was different and that people had opinions about me. I guess I learned as best as I can to shield out a lot and live my life from within.
I remember going to a funeral at a very fundamentalist church, and I just had to get out of there. I went out in the parking lot and just sobbed. I think there was a sense of loss of that little boy not knowing if he was right or wrong. Everything I grew up with I had to walk away from.
I had so many beliefs against being a singer or what it takes. There was a lot of pain associated with that. The rejection of it all. I lived in a rejection state of mind. Not because of my voice; the mike never rejected me. It was harboring all those bad memories of being broke. It teaches you your worth. Nothing good comes from that.
I decided at age 9, but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can't say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.'
Understated jewellery is not for me. It's too itsy-bitsy. My husband is lucky, as I've never had a yen for real jewels.
I had a lumpectomy. It wasn't that bad. Six and a half weeks of radiation.
Once I said to my mother: 'You would be happy if I just kept well-dressed and had good manners,' and she said: 'What else is there?'
Most laws that we make to protect people from guns are usually ignored by the criminals and obeyed by the law-abiding people. And so I think that if you had better data, there'd be no one more in favor of it than law abiding gun owners because they don't want to be smeared and lumped in with the criminals who use guns.
The performances that I love are ones like Gena Rowlands in 'A Woman Under the Influence,' where women are allowed to be messy and imperfect. It's that kind of woman that has always inspired me to seek roles that are a little out of the box. I just haven't always had the opportunity to do them.
I haven't had a single thought for 26 years. I have only understanding. It's somewhat complicated to understand that. I've hardly ever spoken about it. You're in a state of total peace of mind. A kind of nirvana.
I grew up on a farm. We had 11 dogs and, like, 1,500 cattle.
I had piercings all over my face, which did look dreadful, but I got them done while waiting for my husband Michael to get a tattoo. I was bored.
I've taken a lot of risks as far as turning down money to do something I guess I thought was more meaningful. But I don't know if that's the best piece of advice, because I've also struggled with money, when I could have had a little more if I'd just taken the damn job.
My foster parents were very religious. They told me that they had not decided to take me in, rather that it was God that had decided it for them.
I think one of the reasons I've had success in hip-hop is that I can bring out vulnerability in people who are generally seen as tough guys. To me, when a hip-hop musician always plays tough, I find it annoying because I know they're not really like that - there's something deeper and vulnerable. There has to be, because they're human beings.
I just don't ever want it to be nice. I'd prefer someone had a violent reaction to my collection than ever call it 'nice.'
Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.
