I'm not really a first-move kind of gal.
I grew up as a very sarcastic person. I was always the class clown, and to date girls, I had to be really funny. I was really skinny growing up. I was so thin, I had to run around in the shower to get wet. That kind of thin. So I always had to rely on humor and sarcasm.
Migration is as natural as breathing, as eating, as sleeping. It is part of life, part of nature. So we have to find a way of establishing a proper kind of scenario for modern migration to exist. And when I say 'we,' I mean the world. We need to find ways of making that migration not forced.
As comfortable as I was with my adoption, the nature-versus-nurture question has been a big one for me. I adore my parents, but I always wondered if I would feel a different kind of love-not more or less, just different-for someone who was biologically related.
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
I actually no longer use 'art' as the framing device. I think I'm just kind of practicing things, practicing life, practicing creation.
I still get really nervous, though, before each performance. It kind of hits about 15 minutes before we go onstage - sometimes I don't even want to go on. But once I'm onstage I'm fine.
To some degree Satanism is purely a kind of disease of Christianity. You've got to really be Christian to believe in Satan.
Many of us will be obsessed with one or another kind of secret or revelation, be it gossip about friends or ourselves, a fantasy about spies, or a worry about the most personal information now stored in data banks. But few of us think about secrets in general, or about the moral rights and wrongs of hiding or exposing them.
My grandmother wanted my father to be a teacher because she was a teacher. He didn't go down that road until much later in life; he just kind of retired after almost 20 years as being a visiting lecturer at Stanford, where he got his graduate degree.
I was reading this book called 'Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind.' It's really, really good if you want to believe in that stuff.
For some individuals - some soldiers, some contractors - combat provides a kind of purpose and meaning beyond which all else potentially pales in comparison.
I think we need a very, very serious effort, primarily through tax policy to provide incentives and encouragement for people to save and invest and expand their businesses and to create more jobs. The kind of thing we did in the early Reagan years, 30 years ago. I think that's essential.
When I am writing, and occasionally achieve single focus and presence, I finally feel that is where I'm supposed to be. Everything else is kind of anxiety.
I used to think there was something cheap in trying to make beautiful sentences. Now I think language has its own ways and ends, and it does one's thinking good to try to serve them. Beauty isn't truth. But a certain kind of clear beauty will help in the pursuit of truth.
I'd love to do more TV, but I'd love to get into more feature films. I'd also love to go back to the stage when the time and opportunity is right. I haven't gotten to do a lot of that here in L.A., but my favorite thing to do is live theatre. I'd love to actually have a career where you can kind of move in and out of all of those mediums.
Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.
What is universal can be surprising. Over time you find the kind of stuff which has people thinking 'That is just something that occurred to me... there's something wrong with me', is in fact stuff that is universal.
To some extent I could identify with that because I kind of just made my money and got out.
I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.
My first acting lessons were Shakespeare. The first time I ever started working with a coach was doing scenes from 'Measure for Measure,' which were tough dramatic scenes. And then 'Taming of the Shrew,' which required comedic timing. And that's the kind of stuff I love.
I don't know what it must be like to be a writer in general, but to be a comedy writer, it's got to be something - it's a very special kind of talent.
That's what we need nowadays, is more children that have goals other than being a sports figure or some kind of celebrity.
I kind of got my big break with 'The Princess Diaries' and during the press rounds for that everyone asked me: 'Did you always want to be a princess growing up?' And the truth was, no I wanted to be Catwoman.
Mainstream media tends to showcase a very specific kind of Mardi Gras, but my experience of Mardi Gras is very different; it's very cultural.
The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving.
Hollywood wants press, any kind of press.
I'm glad to be partnered with Orgullosa because I feel that now that I'm able to win a gold medal at the Olympics, win a silver medal, I feel little girls will be able to look up to me, and Hispanics will kind of rise a little more.
It's kind of a loping stroke. It's not the prettiest stroke. But it's what's most efficient for me. And I think I kick a little more than most swimmers do.
Growing up, I was always in my high school musicals and everything, but I kind of stopped doing all that when I finished school and acting became my main priority.
Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.
Somebody did an article in one of the newspapers saying that at that time I had the most visibility of any actor around. Kind of nice, you know, when that thing was happening.
Temporary is all you're going to get with any kind of health care, except the health care I'm telling you about. That's eternal health care, and it's free... I've opted to go with eternal health care instead of blowing money on these insurance schemes.
It's still a mystery to me, but even though my mother was like an older sister to me, I kind of put her up on a pedestal.
Music is wonderful. Especially if there's some kind of content to it.
To work on the competition wear for the Olympics is kind of insane. As a fashion designer, you don't think to yourself, 'I'm going to get the opportunity to work with athletes at that level at the Olympic Games.' It really is such an incredible thing to have any kind of contact with as a designer.
