I had a picture-perfect childhood.
When I first arrived at the Matignon, my desire was to reconcile Parliament and De Gaulle. I had forgotten only two things. Parliament and De Gaulle.
I, at high school, had a very select group of friends. I am still pretty tight with them now. I definitely have a lot more friends than I remember when I go back home!
Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?
I regret not having had more time with my kids when they were growing up.
Before journalism, I had worked doing medical aid work in conflict zones. Then, as a journalist, I had written about hospitals in war zones.
For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.
'The Notebook' was beautiful, and I was crying because its hero and heroine had died together.
The second album was emotionally exhausting and my life felt like it had become very serious at a very young age.
My parents are both very funny but they're also relatively soft-spoken, normal human beings while I'm just a lunatic. I don't know where this loud, ballsy, hammy ridiculousness came from. I'm just glad I followed my goals and my parents did too. It's not like we even had a plan when I dragged my mom to Los Angeles.
I had four children, we all had to struggle to get up and get educated, and they all did their part, and we all did the best we could, and that's what a family and a parent is supposed to do.
I know I always had a lot of energy growing up and I had to put it somewhere. Theater allowed me to really feel things, to laugh, to cry, to explode outward. I could do anything and it was totally accepted and appreciated. If I hadn't gone into the theater, I probably would have been a psychotic killer.
And people are always saying: 'Well, you go to Hollywood and you get yourself a film career or a TV series, and then you can do anything you want. Because then you've got the clout.' That had always sounded like a lot of hooey to me, but now I think it's true, unfortunately.
I think after the 2008 Olympics I wasn't really satisfied with the outcome, so I knew I had to change some things.
USNA had a great engineering school, which was one of my interests, and I knew I would benefit from the great discipline and accountability that Navy provides.
Pinterest has been helpful to my business. Making inspiration boards is really key to developing products. When I was getting married, I literally cut out tear sheets and put my own boards together. Had I known about Pinterest, I would have been able to do it so much more easily.
The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.
I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I - if I'm not interested in something, I don't grasp it.
I wish I had the billions of dollars that George Soros has that he has used to fund Democratic causes in the past.
In the first years after the systemic transition, our screens showed American entertainment that had not been available before, or had been available only sporadically.
Another time, we had three days off in Australia, so we went out of our way to fly to Ayres Rock.
I had too much respect for the game to leave it behind or to make it my second or third sport in college.
I used to say, 'Mad' takes on both sides.' We even used to rake the hippies over the coals. They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took aspects of their culture and had fun with it. 'Mad' was wide open.
We had a lot of difficulty in getting the French to accept the pyramid. They thought we were trying to import a piece of Egypt until I pointed out that their obelisk was also from Egypt and the Place des Pyramides is around the corner. Then they accepted it. The pyramid at the Louvre, though, is just the tip.
I had fallen in love with doing television.
I have had death threats from people with fixations.
One of our daughters is now a physician; another is a vice president of a major entertainment company; and the third is a clinical therapist. They place no limits on their ambitions, but for them, those ambitions also have had to fit within the context of having children.
With The Key, it was, I had gone through a divorce and losing my father, and just kinda really reminiscing about how much I loved the traditional side of country music, so I made a record that was really traditional from start to finish.
I was coming back from Tel Aviv recently, and we had forty minutes of bumps. I got so scared I grabbed a paper and pen and put them in my pocket, just in case we crashed and I needed to write a letter from wherever we landed.
God knows I've had productions where there were actors in my plays who were making more money per week than I was.
In 'Pacific Rim' I had to have a haircut I wouldn't usually rock. However, the moustache I had in the film - that might have to come out again. It was a good moustache. Good times.
By that time I was hooked on a career in academic research instead of one in the pharmaceutical industry that I had originally considered in deciding to get a PhD.
It just seemed so odd as people had never commented on my body before. Every woman obsesses over her figure, but I was happy, I felt sexy - I never thought about it. I know this sounds naive, but I honestly never expected this kind of attention.
Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.
I've always had rock star envy. Unfortunately, writing is a pedestrian, tame occupation done while sitting in coffee-stained pajamas in front of a computer rather than prowling around a huge stage in sweaty leather pants, so I have to get my kicks vicariously.
I am a person whose father had no religion but who went to the nuns for a couple of years. And I think I'm the same: On one hand, I pray; on the other hand, I don't believe. I am constantly between the two.
