I really don't think anything I do is a mistake. It could be if I didn't learn from it.
People ask how could I be so conservative. Well, I was born to people raised in 1889.
I wish I could create an IMAX film that would make my work accessible to a broader audience.
Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.
I idolised bands like Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins, who wanted to reach as many people as they could.
I was pregnant with my daughter when I started writing my first thriller, so I guess you could blame hormones.
I do have a family, and I do have friends, and so-called friends, and acquaintances, and many other people I see only around Christmas time. Maybe they could vouch for me. Maybe they could testify to my existence and save a part of me that thinks I'm no better than a bag of potato chips.
I grew up with nothing, so whenever I got to where I could have something I felt like I needed to have everything I couldn't have when I was young.
We love Popsicle in our house. Nick could probably down a whole box in one sitting; he's obsessed with the sugar free box, and I'm just obsessed with the classic.
The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals.
I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine.
I kept thinking, 'How do you make a modern musical?' Then it became clear that I could do it just like a small indie art-house movie, very naturalistically. I could create a world where it's o.k. to break into song, without an orchestra coming up out of nowhere.
Let me tell you this, if I had wanted to have a library of audio and videotapes of Bill Clinton, I could have had that. And after I was accused of being a liar, I wished that I had of.
The summer before I started college, my parents walked everywhere instead of taking the bus. Once a week, they would hand over $10 to the university housing office, a deposit so I could move into the dorms in the fall.
I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.
All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy.
I'd always wanted to be an actress, and suddenly I knew that learning to control my facial muscles was one of the best assets I could have as a performer.
Writing-wise, I started when I was 17. Whatever was bothering me, I could just write about it in a song. I was in the west suburbs of Chicago, then I moved an hour south, and then I went to school up on the South Side - Saint Xavier, though I was at Purdue for a second before I dropped out.
I used to be a writer with superstitions worthy of a professional baseball player: I needed a certain desk chair and a certain armchair and a certain desk arrangement, and I could only get really useful work done between 8 P.M. and 3 A.M. Then I started to move, and I couldn't bring my chairs with me.
I felt like an extraordinary hero. I was only five or six and I had the whole of life in my hands. Even if I had been driving the carriage of the sun I could not have felt any better.
I didn't really know you could make a living in songwriting. I was just very fortunate to have the opportunity to play a few songs for a guy there named Jimmy Ritchey. Through that meeting, I met another couple guys and ended up getting a publishing deal in Nashville.
Every day, I read about new ideas and research that could help someone I care about live a longer and healthier life.
Sometimes it's easy to see the negative side of things or question why people bully you. You could think, 'Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm not worth it. Maybe I should just quit.' But that's when you should fight the hardest. Now I don't mean fight physically, but mentally. Keep being you.
You could have 50 different states having 50 different regulations... until they were all litigated out.
Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most.
I don't think Russia could start a war by attacking any of the NATO member states.
I should only look back at moments that were disparaging, look down upon, negative for me - moments where I could learn something. And if I have been able to use that learning in future, then I am happy about it.
Van Gaal gave me all the confidence I could ask for. He made me striker, my favorite position.
You could argue that Barack Obama faced in '08 a situation as bad as any president since the Great Depression. What Obama inherited from the Bush administration, we all remember, was just an absolute global catastrophe.
Laws are the terms by which independent and isolated men united to form a society, once they tired of living in a perpetual state of war where the enjoyment of liberty was rendered useless by the uncertainty of its preservation. They sacrificed a portion of this liberty so that they could enjoy the remainder in security and peace.
I was not the son of a worker or lacking in material or social resources for a relatively comfortable existence; I could say I miraculously escaped wealth.
I can see how you could get dragged into the bad stuff, but I've got good friends around me, good family. I think I've got my head screwed on.
I was probably a little bit overweight as a child, being passionate about baked beans on toast and Cadbury's milk chocolate when I could get it.
And all the zig-zags and lines in my hair? I used to do that myself. I just thought it was cool that you could actually do that with your hair.
I had gone to the bookstore, and while I hadn't bought any books on how to write a screenplay, I'd bought a couple of scripts so I could see how the formatting works. I just needed to know how a Hollywood screenplay looked on the page, which was something I was totally unfamiliar with.
I've actually tried to roast somebody that I don't like, and it doesn't go well. Either they're a bad sport or I'm not as funny as I could be.