Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It's brutal on my writing.
I get excited about what the Holy Spirit is doing now through all the people he is refining and raising up all over this planet. I love connections and relationship and networking but it must be led by the Spirit.
I'm the first to admit I've had a sheltered life. I grew up in the country and went to a boarding school. It was all just part of the business - be nice to everyone and all that.
You cannot give up on the American dream. We cannot allow our fears and our disappointments to lead us into silence and into inaction.
I grew up dancing salsa - you know, a traditional Puerto Rican dance.
I've been up in the Arctic Circle where they have hockey rinks that don't have any heating. So it's - 40 C outside, it's - 55 inside. Or there's a social centre but no budget for anybody to run any programs. Stuff we wouldn't accept in Winnipeg, but we let it go on and on and on.
Can you hang in there with your investigators when things get going tough? Don't give up on investigators because they have a little weakness. Work with them until the Holy Ghost tells you not to.
America is a great country. It has a lot of work to do. The bottom line is it's easy to talk; it's easy to have the media pick up on something, and it's hard to have the patience to put something in place you can build on that will make sure each citizen has their equal rights.
Ever since I was a kid, I loved being up in front of people. I loved making people laugh; I never had any stage fright.
I grew up in a household where reading was encouraged. My mother believed in the power of words, and my father obviously did too.
I grew up a geek. I added comedy to it midway through high school.
I don't think I look up to any players. Obviously you respect everyone.
Cancer affects everyone, and it's up to all of us to support the important research that can one day make a much sought-after cure a reality.
I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria - when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.
Young people in the business have grown up and made the wrong decisions, or bad decisions, and haven't been good role models. To be someone that people look up to is important to me.
'So You Think You Can Dance' comes on as a high-minded leap up the evolutionary ladder from other reality shows - on this one, you're supposed to learn something, and the guest judges are fellow dance professionals rather than actual celebrities.
Creating these messes that go from administration to administration and then you swoop in and clean them up - with that heroic Delta force - people not realizing that they were always there but doing different things than what we see them doing at the moment.
I'm fascinated by politicians, because I suspect the huge majority of them go into it full of ideas and for the best possible reasons but end up being hijacked.
A dramatic thing, the first time you stand up to your dad.
I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
What makes the production of my work so expensive? The whole installation thing - the construction, the objects, the technology. It really adds up.
I have been an actor for most of my life. When I started out, I didn't think about anything except what was good for me. Like many movie stars, I became all wrapped up in myself.
I was very worried about my mother, growing up - a lot. I do not want my children to be worried about me.
The government does things like insisting that all encryption programs should have a back door. But surely no one is stupid enough to think the terrorists are going to use encryption systems with a back door. The terrorists will simply hire a programmer to come up with a secure encryption scheme.
Pictures get manipulated, pictures get dropped into accounts. We've asked an internet security firm and a law firm to take a hard look at this to come up with a conclusion about what happened and to make sure it doesn't happen again.
A lot of times black actors get stuck in a box. They're up against a lot of limitations for the kind of films that they get approached about. It's easy to get stuck in a box and just be approached about nothing but urban films.
There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.
My mother taught me not to take any crap from anyone and to stand up for my rights. You might not believe this lesson came from a tiny Japanese woman, but it's true.
It's always different when a guy gets drafted and developed and comes up in his first organization and makes an impact. There's something special and timeless about it.
We had cocktail parties and I'd stay up until 5 in the morning.
Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.
I'd met Dr Dre, he was thinking about his next album, we talked a little and he said, 'Let me give you some of these loops and see what you come up with'.
Your true nature doesn't come out. So the gods let you do what you want because free will would be compromised if they showed up at the White House saying, 'Take us to your leader.'
Families out there know that if they get in trouble and they've spent up a bunch of money and they've borrowed and they are up to hock to their necks, the thing they've got to do is start paying off what they owe and cut back their spending.
My dad named me Dakota and my mom came up with my first name Hannah. So it's Hannah Dakota Fanning.
