I had a fifth grade teacher who, as a very small way of trying to contain my class clown energy, gave me 10 minutes at the end of class every Friday to present whatever I wanted. A lot of the time, I did an Andy Rooney impression. I would sit at her desk, empty it, and just comment on what was in there.
I had one drama teacher who was amazing, Ms. Perkins. She really tried to inspire me and get me going.
With my parents, when I was younger, I always had to do two things. If I was acting, I always had to do a sport or something on the arts side of things along with that. That way, if one fell apart, I always had something else to fall back on.
I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.
Coming out of the '60s and the Vietnam War in America, it was commonplace for people to make films that had relevance to them. And since the '70s, cinema has gone almost entirely in the direction of spectacle and escapism and superhero films.
The first time I set out to find George F. Kennan, in 1982, I had just turned 21, begun my final semester at Princeton University and noticed with astonishment that the senior thesis deadline had crept to within four months.
I had had a father whose shoes I could never fill, against whom I would never measure up; yet, I felt no pressure do so.
I think certainly if I'd started getting published when I was in my early twenties, I was quite sheltered then and didn't know anything much about the world. I hadn't had any direct experience of how the world works.
I was always told I had to be an example to my siblings. I was told to toe the line. So I had to behave.
I've had people break into profiles on my Internet; they got into my accounts. This was at the beginning of my career. There is a fair bit of alarm when something like that happens. It definitely bothered me a lot at the time. But you move on from these things.
I've said, I never thought I rebelled. I never - I don't think I've ever had that period. You know, I just had to do what I had to do. You know, I was a good kid.
I have always had huge respect for comedians/comediennes. It's because comedy is very hard to portray.
I loved my mom so much because she had to work on a penny just to put food on the table... During the Depression in the United States, everybody had a tough time. And I was so hurt because she was crying that she didn't have any food for us for Thanksgiving.
I've wanted to be an actress my whole life, and the - none of the women I aspired to be like had natural hair.
When my son was murdered, people asked me how I felt about God and what had happened to my son. I said, 'No, you can't go there. You have to understand that there is a devil, and he works 24/7. Whoever murdered our son was with the devil.'
I never had a desire to be famous... I was fat. I didn't know any fat famous actresses... You know, once a fat kid, always a fat kid. Because you always think that you just look a little bit wrong or a little bit different from everyone else. And I still sort of have that.
I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.
I had family and friends back home. Just because I could potentially feel alone in Los Angeles, that didn't mean I was alone.
I had the pleasure of working for Hart Hanson as the writers' assistant on the Fox show 'Bones.' He was always willing to take five minutes in the kitchen and answer questions I had about writing and the business. Looking back now, I realize he might have just been politely waiting for the coffee to brew.
The Common Core State Standards are more rigorous standards than the great majority of states had in place previously.
Human relationships used to be easy: you had friends, boy- or girlfriends, parents, children, and landlords. Now, thanks to social media, it's all gone sideways.
In communism, we never had any freedom - of movement, of speech, of press. We didn't even make own decisions for our lives, our future. We were human robots.
At some point, when I was 14 or 15, the idea crossed my mind to become an actor... I hadn't been to the theater much... When I grew up, we had one TV channel, which was sufficient.
I had, like, two goals in my career: One was to try to get into 'Second City.' When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to try to work at 'Second City.' And beyond that, my goal was to make enough money as an actor to not do anything else but act, not have to go and wait tables again.
I have seen Colonial churches since I was very small, Colonial painting and polychrome sculpture. And that was all I saw. There was not a single modern painting in any museum, not a Picasso, not a Braque, not a Chagall. The museums had Colombian painters from the eighteenth century and, of course, I saw Pre-Columbian art. That was my exposure.
When I was an undergrad at Stanford, there was a girl named Jennie Kim who worked for the school newspaper. Sometimes people would come up to me and talk to me about articles she had written. 'That one on getting a Brazilian was hilarious', some guy said, high-fiving me.
The perseverance and the strength and the determination and the sacrifice that so many millions of people have had to endure to form this country is far greater than anything that we can really imagine.
I was completely unqualified to get into Harvard. But then I went to my interview for Harvard, and the woman asked, 'Why do you want to go here?' And I took out all of my comedy writing samples that I had done. I couldn't have been more delusional in terms of what I thought they wanted in a candidate for college.
I am going to cut my hair very short; I've never done this before... I want to say I had something to do with how I look, not the cancer.
A while ago, I did a television adaptation of 'Bleak House,' and the character I played, as far as I was concerned, had no redeeming features whatsoever. I wasn't about to try to find any; I didn't need to.
I wish I had time to listen to music more.
This is the rock 'n' roll life, and you had to invent it as you went along. There was no textbook to say how you operate this machinery.
I had stopped going to church the moment I joined the Regiment. No more could my mother nag me into God's presence.
I wish we had more diversity.
I'd always be loaning my sister money, knowing full well I wasn't going to get it back. But she had the kids, and that paid me back.
I'll never forget the dance number that I shot with Anushka. The choreography involved a lot of intricate dance moves. I'm at least 7 inches shorter than Anushka, so I had to wear the highest heels I've ever worn in my life; throughout the song, I even injured my knee a couple of times.
