We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we will build the world of tomorrow.
I was kind of a wild child. I wasn't taught the niceties of life.
I'm really easy to please and not high-maintenance at all. I like that chill, not stressed-out kind of lifestyle.
In some ways, Israel has achieved a peace. There are fewer rockets being sent into Sderot, there are no rockets to speak of from the North, there has been very little terrorism from the West Bank. It's a kind of peace. I hope for a better and more enduring peace. Peace is not an endgame; we will never be completely at peace.
Count your blessings. You are one of a kind. There's no one in the world like you. You are amazing.
No human quality belongs to only one class of person. We all get to be both aggressive and loving. We all get to delight in our careers and revel in our children. We're all kind and brave, soft and hard, sciency and artsy, interested in being looked at and in admiring others' physical form. Everything.
Opening for certain acts after so many years of headlining obviously made us resentful. It was kind of hard watching all these bands, who I really believed didn't deserve to be on top musically, going ahead and pushing us out.
When I came into the Perry family, it was just kind of one of those deals where they were the only family I had.
I remember where I was when I first heard 'Boyz N The Hood' - 126th Street and Normandy, South Central, Los Angeles. I remember that I was on my porch. What they described in that song was so vivid and so clear to me because it was the kind of life I was used to witnessing and partly experiencing in my neighborhood.
Film, theater and television always kind of scared me. I don't ever seriously think of myself as an actor at all, and I don't plan any film career or television career.
My focus in 2010 was on just running fast races. My focus in 2011 was for winning at the World Championships. This year has been a combination of the two so we'll see what kind of time it brings.
Aging on camera is just very hard. I love my age. I feel good about myself but high definition television is not kind. You don't even look like yourself in high-def. It just makes every little line on your face more exaggerated so it ends up aging you. It's like you're watching yourself seven years older.
I do not take to the field to defend myself from certain criticisms. If I do, in this kind of career, it is because I'm very self-critical.
No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil.
I have no hang-ups in life. I don't care about groups and camps. I have been brought up with certain values and ethics. I have never been egoistic about my stardom and lineage. I don't have any qualms about breaking the ice with my colleagues. I can walk up to any actor and greet him, irrespective of what kind of equation I share with him.
I grew up kind of in the country, in western Georgia. And then I moved a lot closer to Atlanta, and I started doing plays, and when I started doing film, I think I really started to love it.
If you're playing a real person, then you want to do a certain amount of research, but that's only going to be so useful to you. Each role requires a different kind of approach to get ready.
'Hatfields & McCoys' is a very profound statement in what happens when you're unable to let go of hatred and hurt and unable to have any kind of goodness in your life.
I knew from an early age that people didn't see the different sides of me. I formulated a kind of bi-cultural identity quite early, and I was always very comfortable with it, but I knew people didn't quite see that.
Women, nowhere in the world, have the kind of important position in society in the amount that they ought to have.
I would never do 'Stardust Memories' because I don't particularly like that kind of movie - that would be why I wouldn't do that.
I'm fortunate enough to have had an opportunity to do a range of stuff, and the thing I admire most in actors is versatility, those that morph and change, those kind of chameleon actors who are unrecognisable from one job to another. That's something that I aspire to establish myself.
After my second-to-last record, 'The Greatest', I had gone on tour for a while, and I didn't play an instrument for about five years. And I got kind of - it's not self-esteem or whatever, or anger toward myself - but disappointed in myself that I hadn't been challenging myself to learn musically.
A band like Depeche Mode would go out and record them hitting a trash can with a steel rod or something and recording it. And that would be one of their sounds of the drums. I love the creativeness of that kind of really raw sampling.
I get a lot of the ideas when I'm resting - either when I'm meditating or getting some kind of work done on my back, like physical therapy or acupuncture. That's where I get my best ideas, maybe because I'm balancing my body.
Definitely scatterbrained. I internalize a lot of thoughts, and sometimes it seems like I'm not listening or totally zoned out, but I'm always on a loop of ideas and song titles. I'm definitely kind of a space cadet, but I'm very laid back.
I've found that when you roll up your sleeves and join people in their daily work, they tend to open up quite a bit and let you know what they really think about the issues facing our country and what kind of job they think the government is doing.
'The Muthaship' was an experiment. All my friends are working at Endemol, so they just kind of pushed me into it to see if we could shoot a little web series on an iPhone - and that's what we did: we shot it on an iPhone. So it's so experiential and so silly.
So you get kind of addicted to a revenue stream, and then all of a sudden it goes away, now the problem is worse than it was before.
Once I moved to Chicago and started trying to get acting jobs, I just tended to book more things that were comedically based than anything else. I never had the preconceived notion, 'I will be a comedic actor.' I just thought, 'I'll go into acting and see what kind of work I can get.'
Because I came to acting quite late, I kind of think one of the few attributes that I do have is that I try to be honest with the character, with the writing. I'm not a tricksy actor; I'm not exactly a scenery-chewing kind of actor.
People still try to sell books that way - as 'books can take you to foreign lands.' We've given children this idea that reading and books are a nice option, if you want that kind of thing. I hope we can get over that idea.
And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation.
As a kid growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, all I wanted to do was be on Broadway in a musical. 'Spring Awakening' kind of answered all of my questions and fulfilled all of my dreams - beyond my wildest dreams.
Everyone out here in Los Angeles is trying to do whatever to break into films. It is a tough industry to get into, kind of like pro wrestling in a lot of respects when you think about it.
I have never been stereotyped in one kind of character. I have been a part of reality shows, events, singing and dancing. No one has ever told me, 'She will fit only in this character or this look.' It has never happened to me, luckily.
