If every woman who's had an abortion took tomorrow off in protest, America would grind to a halt. And that would be symbolic: because women grind to a halt if they are not in control of their fertility.
I never saw myself as a singer; I never really thought I had the voice for it.
In my experience, 'SNL' has Lorne Michaels, who is, you know, the captain of the ship and gives the show direction and a singular focus, whereas 'MadTV' - even in my 13 episodes there - had maybe one too many cooks and was a bit more chaotic creatively.
When I was fresh out of law school, I had a burning desire to do something important, to have an impact in some way, but I didn't know what it was.
My distinguishing feature is the gap between my teeth. I had to wear a brace because my teeth used to stick out like guns from a fortress.
There was no drive because I wanted to become a great designer... I had two small children and a mother, and we all had to eat. That's the drive I had.
For me, becoming a man had a lot to do with learning communication, and I learned about that by acting.
I truly found myself beautiful and thought that I had the potential to model, so I always would do little poses in the mirror and things, but I never expected it to come to this.
After making my stage debut aged nine as Macduff's small son in 'Macbeth,' I had played a number of parts, from 'Twelfth Night's Viola to 'The Merchant Of Venice's Portia'.
It's hard sometimes if you think a character should look a certain way and you're being pushed to do it differently. I've had fights over that. That's why it's so important that you work with good people.
I've had a very unusual background in science - not the usual route of planning on being a scientist from age 3. I think my story shows that success is more about personal motivation and determination than it is about where you were born or what your economic status was.
I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist, but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them internally.
The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the '70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war.
I'm actually one of the few kids in my grade, especially girls, who didn't end up going to college, just because I already knew what I wanted to do. I had already been actively working in music before I graduated.
I was born in Mumbai. We stayed in a joint family. But in 1994, my father had to shift to Pune for business. I started working at a very early stage. Immediately after my SSC board examination, I took up odd jobs in shops, as I wanted to contribute to my family.
When I was young, I lived like an old woman, and when I got old, I had to live like a young person.
I had the luxury of skipping the cabinet meeting to attend my daughter's graduation. So many people don't have the luxury of taking an hour away from the workplace to attend indispensable family commitments. We have to change that dynamic.
Some writers, I'm told, look for their characters' surnames in telephone directories. I don't - it seems too obvious. Or too deliberate: if you go looking for names, you're bound to find them, of course, but I've always had a superstitious hunch that the names you find by accident are always going to be better and more satisfying somehow.
It would be sad if my best work had been 20 years ago and now I only had memories.
When I was born, my parents - my mother especially - couldn't come to terms with that fact that they had another baby girl. I know these stories in detail because every time a guest visited, or there was a gathering, they repeated this story in front of me that how I was the unwanted child.
When I had Mason, I was really ready to leave the business of acting, but still wanted to do work that I could control.
Most people give Kennedy a passing grade, a good grade on the Cuban Missile Crisis handling, but what they don't realize, if he had had strength, if he had showed strength before, there would never have been a Cuban Missile Crisis.
Mark Twain had a way of telling stories that shifts your consciousness away from labels.
My parents, Romanian immigrants, struggled to provide me a better life than the ones they had left in their homeland. They worked hard to give me every opportunity in life, and once I showed natural talent as a young gymnast, they spent every last penny on my training.
When I came out of my mom's womb, I had 'sitcom' stamped on my forehead.
Civil rights happened because youth got involved. The youth stood up and helped to break the pattern that their parents had got accustomed to living. The next generation has to take that stand for whatever it is, socially, that they are involved in.
I have definitely had experiences where I can feel the shift from simply living my life to being slightly outside of my life and taking notes.
I myself was completely torn by the decision to start Teach For America. There was a voice in my head telling me not to do it - to take a more normal path. I did have one thing going for me, which was that I had been rejected from all the other jobs I'd applied to.
The 'Homecoming King' show started off as a storytelling show that I had done; I worked with Greg Walloch to develop it and build it into something bigger.
I was the only BBC graduate trainee in 1961 interested in arts broadcasting. I knew I wanted to write, and I had to make a living.
A lizard is a perfect pet for a model. They only need feeding once a fortnight. And I'm always travelling, so it's perfect. If I had a dog, it would drop dead of starvation.
'Scream' was the first thing he'd ever written that had gotten made, and I'd been in Hollywood for less than two years.
I came from a very musical family, so I grew up singing karaoke with the family. My family said 'do this' and brought me to singing lessons. I had always been writing poems and songs.
What's lost in this whole debate, unfortunately, is that Social Security is not a giveaway where we take money to give to other people. It's a contract with the government... that's worked for 75 years. It's the most successful government program that we've ever had.
I'm very close in age to my older brother, and we had a field at the end of the road where we could run around, climb trees, play football.
Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.
