I always knew I wanted to be a doctor, but I also knew that being a doctor meant more than treating just the patient in front of you.
I'm not saying abolish group work - I think there's a time and a place for people to come together and exchange ideas, but let's restore the respect we once had for solitude. And we need to be much more mindful of the way we come together.
I don't paint butter dishes, doilies, or hummingbirds in my garden. It's more raw, I suppose. But it always creates a reaction.
As women, we understand our bodies, and there's a blossoming that occurs. We're hungry for gourmet meals instead of the fast food. We bring to life a more expansive understanding of life, ourselves, and others. We are more generous and assertive.
I do tend to find when you're playing characters, often - just for the time you're playing them - there are sides of your personality that get stronger because you draw on them more.
I have more ideas than I know what to do with. I guess I'm a bit of a fantasist and a daydreamer - all sorts of things come to me during the day.
Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.
History is my passion. So I write what I love to read. I find that if I combine history with a strong, sensual romance, it is like a one-two punch. The reader doesn't want the history without the romance, and of course the heavier the history, the more it has to be leavened with a sensual, all-consuming love story.
I wish I was a more adventurous person in a way. But actually, security is a really big deal for me.
In court, judges tell people that their conviction carries a sentence of years, or probation. The truth is far more terrible. People convicted of crimes often become social outcasts for life, finding it difficult or impossible to rent an apartment, get a job, adopt children, access public benefits, serve on juries, or vote.
We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.
Watch the walls come down, whether it's in the South or on Wall Street. When the walls come down, what do we find? More markets, more talent, more capital and growth. Which means that the race and sex discrimination stunt economic growth. It's not good for capitalism. It's not good for America's growth. And it's not morally right.
What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life.
You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.
The more vile the thing that's said about me, the less it affects me. It doesn't bother me at all.
I worry that business leaders are more interested in material gain than they are in having the patience to build up a strong organization, and a strong organization starts with caring for their people.
Every time I see a musician - it doesn't matter what age - that inspires me, there's always a secret little wish that maybe we'll play together, because that's how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there's a lot more.
Divorce is never a pleasant experience. You look upon it as a failure. But I learned to be a different person once we broke up. Sometimes you learn more from failure than you do from success.
We had to adjust and threw a few more rise balls and curves but it worked.
I've constantly tried new things, even as a child, and have always been obsessed with pink. Now I'm just a little more ladylike and fearless. You should never feel afraid to become a piece of art. It's exhilarating.
I do wish that reviews were less like book reports. There was an era when reviewers had something to say about a book: when they painted context and drew conclusions. Many reviews these days are little more than plot summary.
Must whales and dolphins be subjected to deafening noise that will cause more than 3.5 million instances of temporary and/or permanent hearing loss? For species that depend on hearing for survival - to find food, migrate, and communicate - any hearing loss could be catastrophic. As one scientist noted, a deaf whale is a dead whale.
The malls are getting more and more crowded. Customers will come online and find an easy place to shop.
If all of a sudden someone said, 'You have five more kids,' I'd be totally OK with it.
Don't take anything for granted. If you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will. Have a little more confidence.
The biggest terrorist is the God of the Quran. I know this is very dangerous and this will offend many people. The more you follow the steps of the prophet of Islam and the God of Islam, the more you get close to being a terrorist.
The only real difference between shooting 'Firefly' and 'Serenity' was that on 'Serenity,' we had a lot more freedom with time. When you're shooting a television show, you usually have anywhere between six and nine pages of script to shoot a day, and only twelve hours to do it. But with 'Serenity,' we could shoot one scene all day long.
I have a tendency to lean towards a more retro look.
Pregnant women who are in places where Zika is spreading should do everything they can to avoid mosquito bites. And we, as a society, need to do everything we can to control Zika. That means learning more about it; that means controlling mosquitoes more effectively. That means achieving a vaccine.
What's more unnerving than magnetism, ghosts, and unpurified water? Gadgetmongers who purport to protect us from metaphysical monsters that go bump in the New Age night.
I haven't changed a bit. I go out with my mates, but I probably have to watch what I do a little more.
We're all born storytellers. It's part of the species. But, more specifically, I suppose a particular combination of sensitivity and trauma made me a writer: an essential disquiet with reality, which required exploration through portrayal.
Shoes are a big part of your look. I think that if your outfit isn't really something special, then fun footwear is a great way to jazz it up and make your ensemble more interesting.
I've learned over time that human beings tend to want to do more than they have the courage to do or that the social contract will allow them to do.
As technology has improved, our digital lives have only grown more tangled and cluttered.
As you get older, as you become more sensitive, feel more, it becomes harder to make jokes. You censor yourself.
