I was in 'Jacques Brel' Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with 'Jacques Brel' doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song.
There are really good reasons to leave the workforce or work less or take a different job when you want to be with your children. I just want women - and men - to make that choice once they have the child. Not years in advance, because... they don't get the right opportunities. They give up before they even start.
'Banshee' is the story of a man who gets out of prison, tracks down his long-lost love, and tries to reclaim what was stolen from him years earlier by assuming the identity of a sheriff. I guess you could say it's an explosive action drama - sit down, strap in, and enjoy the ride!
By 1969, when I celebrated 45 years in the music business, I also had 45 people in our musical family.
The 12 years I was in Fleetwood Mac before were not particularly happy years. I was not in a very good place, psychologically, when I left. I didn't have a lot of confidence in what I was doing.
Looking back 25 years later, what I may say is that the facts have been far better than the dreams. In the long course of cell life on this earth it remained, for our age for our generation, to receive the full ownership of our inheritance.
Everyone knows in the industry that when these great roles come up, every two years, there's a huge number of people up for them. I'm not one of those top five females that can personally finance any film.
I wouldn't trade those 10 years for anything. The Navy taught me a lot of things. It molded me as a man, and I made a lot of wonderful friends.
Primarily, we need to change 100 years of thinking, where we try to extend the promise of American life by moving things to Washington, and let's move it the other way: less of Washington, more from ourselves.
It's very hard to motivate yourself and others with only one goal - particularly if it's complex and you might not get there until years down the road. That's why intermediate goals are so important.
I started at 5 years old in the kitchen table with my family supporting me. I know where I'm from and I know exactly where I'm going.
Well over fifty years ago I was making radio loudspeakers and radio sets in Rochester, New York; pretty young and inexperienced; but we survived the depression.
I have never directed anything for the stage. I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed.
I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.
Because actually it's really hard to get things made. It takes years. To fight the fights you inevitably have to fight, even when you've produced Harry Potter, you'd better have the commitment and the passion to knock down walls, not take no for an answer.
I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.
If I took the 40 years of my dad talking to me about war and battles and taking me to battlefields and distilled it down into one question, it would probably be the idea of the necessary or unnecessary war.
After spending the last few years working on a serious novel set in Chechnya, I was drawn to both the brevity and casualness of Twitter, and wrote a series of tweets titled 'The Erotic Inner Life of Mr. Bates from Downton Abbey.'
I was trying to learn about Lyndon Johnson when he was young and creating his first political machine in the Texas hill country. I moved there for three years. You had to learn that world.
I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.
In 35 years of being in the media, I've had all this mud flung at me many, many times. It's not the first time. It's nothing unusual. I've been through it all before and the best way to deal with it is not to read them.
Enrollment in Colorado is expected to expand about 25 percent in seven years. It's very difficult to find those additional funds. Therefore, I think you're probably going to have increased pressure on tuition.
Most of the groups I worked with 30 years ago are either dead or dead broke. And it's a shame.
I've been campaigning like anything for restoring these changes. For 27 years. I wrote a book about it, well, a portion of the book was devoted to these scenes and why they should have been in the movie.
I have a son, Mason, who is disabled - cerebral palsy - and he does not walk independently, sit independently or speak. He uses a talking computer. I started becoming an advocate for him when he was 3 years old.
I never really trained to be a musician, but I've been playing guitar since I was around, like, 13 years old. For me, the guitar has always been the instrument that I've played. I play a little piano. I taught myself everything by ear. I don't read music at all, which has not really been a hindrance.
My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.
And we have done more in the two and a half years that I've been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it's ending 'don't ask, don't tell,' making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.
I had to fend for myself from the time I was 17 years old. I was a high-school dropout. I wasn't quite living on the streets, but I didn't have a lot of hope.
Johnnie Cochran hasn't spent 20 years serving people in low-income, minority neighborhoods, ridding them of gangs and narcotics. I have. He hasn't been shot at and punched. I have. I've paid my dues to be able to say I'm not a racist.
Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.
I've been pleased to work with so many wonderful stars through the years. This has been an amazing journey. I hope it continues.
When my father arrived in Kenya, he had found the Kikuyu way of life similar to that of the British at the time the Romans invaded England 2,000 years ago.
Sometimes I would almost rather have people take away years of my life than take away a moment.
He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.
