I have twins that I didn't want to have the life that I had. I didn't have a great life growing up.
If I had any advice for my 16-year-old self, it would just be to stay strong, because acting is not an easy lifestyle, especially when you are starting out. That being said, it definitely makes it all worth it when it does happen.
Ireland was an idyllic place for us as children. We had all these cousins and all this green countryside. Given what I've written about rural Ireland, my memories of it are all blue skies and endless play.
I've been lucky. I've never really had a job that I did that I didn't like.
I use the word 'passion' a lot when I talk to young people. In every pursuit I've been on, I've had a lot of passion behind it. It continues to motivate me every day on what I like to do and where I'm going.
For women, World War II had offered an opportunity, and often the necessity, to get out of the house to work.
Every successful sports season I had included detailed daily itineraries. We received one in the morning and one before practice, and they set us up to win.
The thing is, I grew up in L.A., so I had this unique opportunity to live in both communist Russia and see that life, and then move to America as a young girl and experience a completely different life.
I was just glad to meet somebody outside of my group of small town friends who was into music. Somebody else who had aspirations to do something more than sing at a record hop.
I believe that some of us who were kept by God a long while before we found Him love Him better perhaps than we should have done if we had received Him directly, and we can preach better to others - we can speak more of His loving-kindness and tender mercy.
I had everything I'd hoped for, but I wasn't being myself. So I decided to be honest about who I was. It was strange: The people who loved me for being funny suddenly didn't like me for being... me.
One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I write. If it had been, I probably wouldn't have wanted to translate it. There are no one-liners. It's much more a truthful comedy than a play of dazzling wit.
Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother saw me and my sister off to college, and my first novel was published when I was 46. This 'tardiness' isn't something I'm proud of, but I'm happy to be an inspiration to others who arrive at these milestones later than most of us do.
I've always had a kind of visual eye, and it was a pleasant exercise for that.
A 1920s dress I wore on my 21st birthday... literally disintegrated on me. I had the most wild debauched night. And that disintegrated dress sits in my closet - such a great memory.
I had a variety of minds about me and all of them unsettled.
I had a lot of reading problems growing up.
I've had sleep paralysis.
I ran for Congress in 2012 because I had had enough. Enough of career politicians, enough of political gamesmanship, and enough of the lack of leadership in Washington.
My sister took me as her own. My mum had a lot of help raising me. That's what happens in large families: your siblings raise you.
Religion and political cartoons, as you may have heard, make a difficult couple, ever since that day of 2005, when a bunch of cartoonists in Denmark drew cartoons that had repercussions all over the world - demonstrations, fatwa, they provoked violence. People died in the violence.
I liked science very much. A science teacher in high school inspired me, and because of him, I began studying science at the university. But when I got there... well, the subject still attracted me a lot, but I had to do all these exams, and it was just like working in an office. I couldn't stand that.
What was interesting about grunge was that it was this death sentence to the rock that had preceded it, which was hair metal.
I think of Bret Hart as somebody who held the Intercontinental championship like it was the World Heavyweight championship. Every title match he was in felt important, like it was the most important thing on the show. The way he carried himself and the matches he had, it was just everything I thought a champion should be.
I've never had to do anything I didn't believe in. Sometimes that meant being poor and waitressing a while longer, but I've always stuck with it.
I wanted to be an actress. I think it had a lot to do with being a kid and watching how every time my dad would stand up to talk people would applaud... that was pretty cool.
There's a very small percentage of people that take limos to school and have $2000 handbags - no one in my high school had that!
No one knew what Rodney King had done beforehand to be stopped. No one realized that he was a parolee and that he was violating his parole. No one knew any of those things. All they saw was this grainy film and police officers hitting him over the head.
I've had enough publicity for 15 lives.
I had some years of definite frustration. Auditioning and not working as much as I would have liked to, or working and being paid a pittance, and sort of scrounging by in New York and sleeping on a chair that folded out into a bed.
When I was director of the CIA, I knew that we had been - and I'm choosing my words very carefully here - effective in our expansion. We really had - expansion of government agencies and expansion of use of contractors. Effective, we were; efficient, we weren't. And so, as director of the CIA, I went after the inefficiencies part.
I've never felt that I had to take a role in one of those mediocre but hugely budgeted romantic comedies because I want to wear beautiful dresses and have people think I'm pretty and that I get the guy.
We've always had our hardcore fans. But the general public has a love-hate thing about the 'Kinks.' It always leaves people with a question mark on their heads.
My mom actually had a band called Six Pack - even though there were seven of them - who went around Chicago performing popular songs. Her voice was like Gladys Knight mixed with Aretha Franklin.
In the final analysis, the incident is seen as originating from an emotional expression of the frustration and anger of the proud people of China who had been subject to ever increasing oppression from without and decadent corruption from within.
I tried working odd jobs that had nothing to do with creating, and it was difficult for me. In the end, I just always loved movies. When I'm making a film, I feel most alive, like I'm doing the right thing, and I'm in the place where I need to be.
