Bollywood has taught me a lot of lessons. Sometimes it has been very hard, but every struggle and obstacle that I overcame made me stronger and made me more aware.
The Internet has improved a lot in the last few years, but still, you wouldn't want to depend on Web sources for historical analysis. There's just something hard to beat about a book.
In a way, architecture is about communication. That's an aspect of the discipline that is somewhat lacking, and there's definitely room for more progression into that area. I suppose that gives me a bit of a different edge. I'm also very, very used to doing a lot of exhaustive research and finding interesting information from different sources.
One of the things I liked about the movie 'Minority Report' was they used a lot of futurists as consultants to really try to understand what the world really would be like in 50 years.
A lot of painters listen to music, I think, while they paint. But I hate to do that. It's a horror. I can't really listen to the music. I'm not really concentrating on it, and I'm not really concentrating on the painting.
I do smoke in real life. A lot. We're all smoking right now in fact.
From the time I was very young, maybe five or six, I thought a lot about being an actress. I didn't tell my friends about my ambitions, though, especially when I got older, because I thought they would not receive them well. I never talked about what I wanted to do.
I have a lot of critics; we all know that.
My family moved a lot as a kid. We started in Colorado, where I lived for five years. We moved to Chicago for two years, to San Francisco for one year, Connecticut for seven, Oregon for a couple years, and then I went to school. So I was always moving, I'm still always moving.
Never crowd a pan with too many mushrooms. They give off an enormous amount of moisture. And there's nothing worse than a braised mushroom, other than a lot of braised mushrooms.
'Criminal Intent' scripts are very good. Like others involved in 'Law & Order' stuff, I've come to appreciate the lack of 'soap,' if you will. The story dominates. You don't spend a lot of time with the psychological underpinnings of the police.
I can't say I'm not grateful to have journalists writing about me as a genius. But I know it's not true. I'm not confused. I understand that success comes through a lot of failure and a lot of very embarrassing failure. People want to create the next Facebook, but they are too afraid to create the next Facemash.
I'll bet there are a lot of artists that nobody hears about who just make more money than anybody. The people that do all the sculptures and paintings for big building construction. We never hear about them, but they make more money than anybody.
With a smaller setting, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility within a given moment, but not necessarily the velocity you have with a big band.
My music is tonally based. There is plenty of dissonance, but it's used as a contrast. There is polytonality at times and a lot of rhythmic interplay.
A lot of what a military officer does is not just leading troops in combat. It's also doing budgets. It's solving complex problems. If you can sit down with warlords, you can certainly sit down with different parties and folks with different interests and come out with an amenable solution.
If 10 people see my movie and all ten really love it, then that means a lot to me, rather than ten million people go and see it and most of them hate it.
I read a lot growing up. It was kind of my comfort, you know; I loved it. I love story. I love narrative. I was academic. I wasn't particularly athletic. I didn't make the drill team. I didn't go out for sports.
Guys like Spielberg and Zemeckis and really anybody who is a storyteller-filmmaker today has studied Hitchcock and the way he visually tells a story. He was the master of suspense, certainly, but visually you would get a lot of information from what he would do with the camera and what he would allow you to see as the story was unfolding.
It's only a matter of time before the English clubs become a lot more competitive in Europe, if not dominant, because our league is, by far, the richest league in the world.
There's a book called 'The Shack' - it had a lot to do with me coming full circle, meeting my birth mother. Awhile back, my birth mom and my adopted mom came to my show together, and it was pretty surreal.
What works for me is simply to read a lot of stuff throughout the year - not with a particular story or theme in mind, but just because you never know what might be useful or interesting in the long run. I much prefer to just absorb a lot of stuff and let the old unconscious chew down on it over time.
I've had people ask me if it would have been easier to take care of your parents if you had siblings, and I think it's 50/50. I know people who have siblings, and there is a lot of acrimony because somebody always feels that they are doing more than the other person.
When I talk to young people who want to go to Broadway or whatever, I say, 'The highs are very high and the lows are very low and then there is a lot in between.'
What bitcoin does better than the current financial system is it's a better stored value globally. There are a lot of countries that really don't trust their banks or their currency, and bitcoin is an alternative.
I was nerdy and really into computers. I was a good student until my senior year, when I started traveling and had a lot of absences.
I get approached to do a lot of commissioned art. Sometimes I do it, but I usually don't, given the day job and everything I've sort of got going on. I'm really passionate about it; there's not that much time left over for the other commissioned projects.
I'm a huge fan of a lot of different genres of music, and I really felt like somehow I had been pigeonholed a little bit - maybe of my own doing - and in a way where I felt like I was sort of falsely defined. What my music was being called wasn't really the music I was always listening to.
I have not lost an awful lot in my life, but the defeats have taught me more than the victories.
I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.
The most difficult thing about my job is that I do a lot of 19-hour days. It's really difficult to have a life, never mind a relationship. I don't have any regrets, really. I'm quite content. I'm very stubborn and persistent. I just keep working.
Pro wrestling is not fake; it's sports entertainment. We go out there and we perform, and a lot of what we do out there is real, but we're not going to insult anyone's intelligence - there is a predetermined winner. It's just the fans don't know who it is, and that's what makes it so intriguing.
Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I've had a lot of experience with that.
I cry a lot when I feel empathy. I can feel heartbroken by life, and I cry quite easily, sometimes for no reason. It's healthy, I think.
Since I started acting, I've always been aware of the sort of 'beastly entity' that is America and Hollywood, and semi-consciously, I devised a kind of route in - I'd seen a lot of people try and fail.
We still have a lot of work to do as African artists to get more recognition in the U.K. and the U.S., but right now, definitely, we're getting the recognition. The thing is we have to earn it. Keep working. Stay working.
