Singing and acting suit me. I made a vow to myself to do everything that I can do with this life that I have, and I have to find the time to do this. Sometimes I need to be an actress. Sometimes I don't need to be Jill. However, everyone is always looking for the Jill in everything.
It's a weird profession, as I don't really consider myself an actor. I did at one point, and I went and started doing auditions, and I was so useless at them and so demoralised by doing audition after audition and not getting them and also not being able to take it in my stride at all. I just felt crushed and worthless.
I remember joining a boarding school in the sixth grade. I was lazy, complacent, and fat. Suddenly, I realised that I had to fend for myself. That's when I discovered this drive within myself. For the first time, I ranked first in class, which was a miracle in itself. However, it didn't matter to my family.
I take conscious breaks for myself 'cause I like to rejuvenate and get my creative juices flowing. I also like to take my time with my creativity; I think it's important.
It's not that I don't see myself as hot and sexy. Don't get me wrong. No, it's not that.
I look at myself like a farmer, harvesting my wares and taking them to the market, and then I go back and do it again.
Maybe with boxing and good focus, I can fix myself and make my mother proud.
I was reading so much about myself in the papers that was not me.
For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival. I was convinced that the woods were calling me. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by myself by the time I'm 25, I have failed.
Of course, neither David or myself ever saw a penny from them; it was the early days of merchandising.
Everything about my journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed me having to be a salesperson - from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers.
I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It's embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.
Standing by myself, just having everybody looking at me the entire time, is not my idea of a good time.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Getting and keeping my immunity became very important to me. For I needed to take care of myself and my family. No one else was worried about me.
When I ask myself what are the great things we got from the Renaissance, it's the great art, the great music, the science insights of Leonardo da Vinci. Two hundred years from now, when you ask what are the great things that came from this era, I think it's going to be an understanding of the universe around us.
When it comes down to it, at the end of the day, I need more out of my life and I need to push myself harder. And if at the end of the day I don't have it, then I don't have it, but at least I'm going to put myself out there. If I fail, I'm going to fail terrifically.
The way a character looks reflects what's on the inside. I can make myself look really bad, and I can make myself look kind of gorgeous. It's not about me; it's about the character.
When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader.
The greatest lesson I have learned in life is that I am enough simply because I have been given life. Growing up, I constantly found myself trying to please others because I wanted to be included and validated. I expended myself completely.
I was seeing everything through pain. I would roll out of bed and do my exercises. I had to do that to work out the remainder of the pain pills. I would drink coffee and go to the set and plunge myself so far into my work.
I learnt early to have little expectation so I protected myself from ever feeling greatly disappointed.
I've never thought of myself as a writer. I still don't, despite all the writing I've done.
I've worked myself to exhaustion before. I was so young, and I thought I could do everything; it was just too much for my body and my mind.
I got into therapy in the fifth grade because I said in a sarcastic way that I was going to kill myself, and they didn't get it then. Nothing's changed.
Shania Twain and Martina McBride and all these wonderful women were saying that it's awesome to be a woman, and it's awesome to be a confident woman. Obviously, I could never compare myself to them, and I want to be my own thing, but I think that message is what I want to say as an artist.
I'm happier on the runway than I am on the red carpet. Because then I am not being myself. I think, on the red carpet, it's a weird, like, 'Who am I? Am I me? Am I them?'
I would never go travelling on my own. Some people like to go backpacking alone, but there's no way I would do that, even if you paid me - I just don't see the point. If I discover something beautiful, for me it's very important to be able to share it with someone and not just see it for myself.
I know that a lot of my life is spent thinking about crisps and eating crisps and hating myself for eating crisps. It's just not worth it. Or it wouldn't be if crisps weren't so delicious.
When I sat down to write I just felt like a geek writing about myself. And then it dawned on me, just because of the way I am, I can't stop talking, and part of the problem is that anything that gets said reminds me of something that happened to me one time, and invariably I cut people off and talk about myself.
I never saw fairy tales as an escape or a cop-out... On the contrary, speaking for myself, it is the way to understand reality.
My advisers built a wall between myself and my people. I didn't realize what was happening. When I woke up, I had lost my people.
Many people, including myself, had our scientific lives changed by the inspiring new vision of science that Popper gave us.
These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I'm washing the dishes, driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you're driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.
I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.
It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American Gangster,' I'm playing an Italian. I've always been fortunate enough to have been allowed to play all these diverse roles.
