I feel like I needed a balance. I don't want to forget about my personal life and spending time with myself.
I became good at defending myself, but as far as I was concerned, that was a transient skill.
After the novel was published, I came to feel that I couldn't call myself Orthodox anymore. It's so patriarchal, anti-women, anti-gay. There was something about writing 'Disobedience'... it felt like I had put it all in the book. I had done my best by it, recorded what it meant for me. I felt I was done.
I took lessons since I was little; I used to pay for my own singing lessons and take myself. Just take the bus when I was a kid and go. But I'd been writing music for years, since the smallest age.
It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.
I am two different people. What you see on the court is just natural for me. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I have always said 'C'mon' purely to fire myself up. Off the court, I am a lot shyer. I stick to my team and my family and people I trust.
I used to be neurotic. I didn't like myself very much. But somewhere in my mid-40s, my neuroses stopped seeming so important. I developed a sense of humor.
Self-Realization Fellowship seemed like training. It was the training ground for finding a sense of peace in myself. Because that's my job. It's no one else's.
When I was 15, I changed my name legally. I think it was largely due to my struggle about being gay. Everything just didn't fit, and I was trying to find things I could identify myself with, and it started with my name.
When I watch myself in movies I go, 'My God.'
Yeah, I like to keep myself interested - I'll kind of throw myself into some area that I don't completely know or understand, that I'm not adept at, so I'm forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There's a good feeling that comes from that.
I don't see myself as competing with other actresses. I mean, I went through a time when I was in New York, and I was going to lots of auditions and trying to get parts, but even then, you're not really competing with the other actresses. There is a competition going on, but it's not like something you can win in that way.
I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.
I still do my comedy and my performance stuff and my acting so it's not all-consuming. But I do find myself drawing more and more these days.
I describe myself as a big kid with an old soul, I'm very playful whimsical, but I definitely have that old soul as well.
My toughest job every day is maintaining intensity with myself and with my staff.
I certainly never intended for myself an academic career and, were the academy to suffer, I'd just go do something else. I don't have a commitment to it or to really, frankly, almost any institution that assumes that it has to be stable forever.
As corny as it sounds, I'm often pinching myself going, 'What great opportunities and great parts and great people that I've gotten to work with.'
As an actress, I have to be objective about myself. If I don't criticize myself, there are plenty who will do a find job of it for me!
Picasso once remarked I do not care who it is that has or does influence me as long as it is not myself.
I ask myself: Would I have been any worse off if I had stayed home or lived on a farm instead of shock treatments and medication?
To be honest, I was not very good in studies; I was an average student. I used to work hard, whether it was for wrestling or studies, as I considered myself not that talented. I used to mug up everything during exams.
The best stuff - the most interesting stuff - usually happens when I allow myself to be in the moment and working from that space.
Last year was a tough decision for me, to end my season so short. But it was the right decision for me, because right now I feel great. I can go out here and sprint full speed right now, but I'm just going to pace myself for April 5.
I'm not out there trying to get press for myself nor am I trying to convince anybody that I'm living any kind of a life. I'm actually trying to convince people: I don't want you to know what I'm living, because it's none of your business.
The danger of that - and there's a grave danger that I, myself, have to be very aware of - is that you become so involved and intrigued in the language that sometimes you lose track that that is only a means to an aesthetic experience that the listener has to get.
If I hadn't been a singer, I might have been a photographer or an artist. But it's singing I love. I sing all the time, and I feel really good that I've expressed myself.
I was raised to believe that you're safe in God's hands. But I don't feel safe with myself.
I remember when I was like 19 years old and I started a desk calendar company to pay for my first short film, just so I could say one day that my daddy didn't pay for my first short film. And I really established myself in the film festival world.
When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.
I don't want there to be this separation between the rich and poor. I may be part of the three percent because I've been fortunate and done well for myself, but I will never forget about the 97 percent. That was me growing up. I was so poor I dreamt about being just 'regular poor,' not 'poor, poor.'
Sometimes I think I am still that 5-year-old girl playing with her dogs in the yard. That's how I see myself.
Theatre is relatively easy if you're British - you're living in the theatre capital of the world, London - there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.
I'm going to get up every morning at 6:30 to work out. Then, when I've kept with it all week, I give myself something I really want, like a new handbag or a piece of jewelry I'm coveting.
It is good to learn from the ancients. I'm a bit of an ancient myself. They had a lot of time to think about architecture and landscape.
The space and light up there in Norfolk is wonderfully peaceful. I find myself doing funny things like gardening, and cooking, which I rarely do in London.
