When I went into the seminary, I was one of those victims of New Math and had not had Algebra I and had no idea what we were doing in New Math in the ninth grade. But when I went into the seminary, they had gone the traditional route and taught first-year algebra.
When I read 'Ray' for the first time, I had just quit. When I read 'The Last King of Scotland,' I had just quit. I hadn't quite quit when I read 'Scandal,' but I was feeling really unfulfilled as an actor.
The only real difference between shooting 'Firefly' and 'Serenity' was that on 'Serenity,' we had a lot more freedom with time. When you're shooting a television show, you usually have anywhere between six and nine pages of script to shoot a day, and only twelve hours to do it. But with 'Serenity,' we could shoot one scene all day long.
I had - and continued to have - great fun exploring the Revelation Space universe, but it was always clear to me that I wanted to write other kinds of books, even within what might be termed the fairly narrow overlapping genre categories of hard SF and space opera.
What's interesting is a lot of the older music when we start performing it, it acts a lot like muscle memory. It's kind of like riding a bike. For me as a singer, I just had to remember like what part of my face I sang that into.
I never minded giving my opinions. They are just opinions, and I had studied music and I had strong feelings. I was happy for my opinions to join all the other opinions. But you have to be prepared for what comes back, especially if you don't agree with the dominant mythology.
I had heard that Robert Duvall was interested in doing 'Lonesome Dove,' and he's one of those actors with whom I'd work on any project. So I tracked down the script and started to bug the producer, Dyson Lovell, to get in there.
When I walked up on stage at the Emmys, and when people stood up, it was a really sort of emotional, overwhelming moment. It was like I had been accepted.
When you're singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It's happening.
I was bullied from grade one to six. Even middle school was tough for me. Everyone had these pre-existing friendships, and I was the new kid, who was acting, so that didn't help much either. It was really tough.
My mother had a premonition and she felt that hairdressing would be very very good for me.
I had to realize that if I didn't really love who I was, and if I couldn't appreciate this - my body - as my moneymaker, then I wasn't going to make any money.
At art college, I started to do music and then painting and drawing - and that would have been my ideal life, to be an artist and be paid for it, to be able to create stuff. I realized it was difficult, but I don't know if I had the application for it.
I feel grateful to be this size; after all, if I weren't small and had not achieved these world records, I might never have been able to visit Japan and Europe and many other wonderful countries.
If I had to live my life over, I'd live over a saloon.
I had a job lined up as an assistant brand manager at Playtex, at age 23, all lined up. But my father had an offer to be acquired by DDB in 1978. He said, 'I'd really like you to come into the business for a year.'
I had a very famous trainer tell me once, 'You can usually train a wild animal but never tame a wild animal, ever.' They are always going to be wild, no matter what anybody says.
The president and the administration had a duty to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, but powerful constituencies of the president did not want the president to defend it. And unfortunately, politics trumped duty.
I had some friends that went to this hypnotist to stop smoking, and I kind of love things that seem magical. And I liked that it was in Santa Monica, and I had to go near the ocean to get my brain washed out or whatever. So I went there. And I went on a Thursday, and I got hypnotized.
Here's the thing: I did one episode of Deep Space Nine, and I loved everybody that I worked with. People couldn't have been kinder... But I had a really, really difficult time with the prosthetics.
I've had Christians treat me in a way that is so wrong and so vicious, I realized there's a difference between God's people and God.
The movie that really 'did it for me' was 'All About Eve.' The backstage feeling, the authenticity, the passion those people had for their lives in the theater. I must say, the movie 'All About Eve,' what a great movie! 'All About Eve' had a profound effect on my life.
Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency.
A year ago I had a back injury and followed a good nutrition program to help speed up my recovery. I focused on exercise and staying healthy in order to get back out on the ice.
I have always admired and had enormous respect for Elizabeth Taylor. She was not only an incredible actress but an amazing woman as well.
I would have felt ashamed if I had not been part of the resistance and part of fighting back against the forces of the state.
When I first started submitting my work professionally - and we're talking years and years ago - I had no patience for editorial response times. I hated waiting to hear back from people, hated waiting to see my work in print.
I've never had an issue with studios. I believe in them as true creative partners in the process.
Across the Atlantic, in the scattered, far-flung, rural settlements of colonial America, hospitality had become a central concern, and hostesses, like peacocks displaying their iridescent plumage, tried to outdo one another with their creative food displays.
My daddy didn't even sign my birth certificate. So I ain't never had his last name.
Well, one of the things a lot of Americans don't know, when Mitt Romney is nominated a few days from now, he will be the most experienced executive to be nominated for the presidency since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, who had run a university and had run the allied war effort. That's actually a big deal.
I went to the Grand Canyon with my family when I was about 8 years old, and I had a very blah experience. I think the scale of it is too huge - you don't appreciate it.
In art and music, particularly in the 20th century, there was a big period there where for something to be called profound you had to not be able to understand it.
I was playing this character, Melchior Gabor, who was a rebel and who was a person who didn't let the world define him, and who stood up to authority and was this kind of revolutionary... And when I left 'Spring Awakening,' I came out of that experience feeling like... I had cultivated this side of my personality that hadn't existed before.
I've been on, like, the forefront of social media. I run all my own pages, and this is back to MySpace and answering my own emails in, like, 2006. Even before that, I always had websites with emails that dropped directly to me.
I'd always enjoyed acting at high school, and I was all lined up to do an honours degree course in biology at a Canadian university, and at the eleventh hour the drama teacher I had said, 'You know, you'll get a lot more girls if you go into acting,' and that kinda sold it.
