I knew from the time I was a young girl that I was destined to be a writer. I'm incredibly stubborn. The more someone tells me I can't do something, the harder I work to prove them wrong. My father's nickname for me when I was growing up was 'Hardhead.'
I remember lying down for a nap one day at about 4:00 and walking up at 11:00 the next morning.
Up until now, I had ideas that I wanted to try but didn't have the opportunity to do them.
It was an hour of sanity with the good guys winning, a situation where the world was right side up.
You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.
I grew up in Chicago and was a huge fan of 'The Second City', so when I moved to L.A., I was looking for anything that resembled that... then I started 'The Groundlings', so I went to a show and it was very much like 'Second City'. I was so impressed that that same night I went backstage and I went up to the funniest person there.
Now I'm this far up the ladder and I've got so much farther to go with what I want to achieve with it.
I've never been drawn to the feminist movement. I was brought up to believe that men had little to do with the home or children - except to bring in the money.
For me, writing is like being taken on a walk by a footnote: It's amazing where you end up.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
My job involves searching for 'lost' quotations - that is, trying to find out who came up with a quotable saying that lingers in someone's mind and which they wish to use for their own purpose and which they cannot find in conventional dictionaries of quotation.
I had an addiction to sugar growing up - major, major, major.
Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.
Often undecided whether to desert a sinking ship for one that might not float, he would make up his mind to sit on the wharf for a day.
I think I would have had less tumult in my life if I hadn't grown up in my particular house.
As wild as I was, when the cops show up, and suddenly you're being handcuffed, it's so deeply shocking and terrifying, the loss of freedom.
I never really grew up being political or Labour. It was just a realisation that where you were born mattered. That how you spoke mattered... who you knew mattered.
My Lords temporal, today is the day to rise up against the regiment of Lords spiritual and proclaim the values of enlightenment, compassion and common sense.
I thought to myself, there's a man who gave up his life to serve others - to touch people in that way is probably the greatest thing you can do as a human being.
It's not hard to keep up the image we chose. It's not hard to stay yourselves.
That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes.
It is easy at any moment to surrender a large fortune; to build one up is a difficult and an arduous task.
If I didn't forgive the people who took me into the barracks and beat me unconscious over a period of days during the period when the British state was indicted for inhuman and degrading treatment in 1971-72, or even the guys who shot me, if you don't forgive them, you end up with unnecessary baggage.
I grew up to have my father's looks, my father's speech patterns, my father's posture, my father's opinions, and my mother's contempt for my father.
There's no way I can compete with someone who can write rap or rock and roll. Nor do I wish to. But I've always kept up to date with music changes. I worked very hard not to type myself.
Breaking up is just hard, even if you're the one breaking up. It's not fun. It can be dramatic and complicated. And then you get a little distance and you think, why did it have to be so complicated and dramatic?
You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.
I learned very early that you don't get time back. I'd miss my children growing up, so that's the reason I retired.
My sister and I are both diagnosed with second-hand smoke syndromes. We have never smoked, but we grew up with second-hand smoke our entire lives.
Almost a quarter of our planet is a single mountain range and we didn't enter it until after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon. So we went to the moon, played golf up there, before we went to the largest feature on our own planet.
How do you grow up in the shadow of a guy - I want to talk about the movie in a second - but how do you grow up in the shadow of a guy who really is a legend in his own time?
I can't imagine how many kids around the world will look at pictures of Pluto and think, 'I want to grow up to be a scientist.'
I would love if gay men responded to me. All I want is for many gay men to dress up as me for Halloween.
Growing up, my mom was very strict about how I dressed and how I behaved, and I said to myself that I wasn't going to be like that. But now I know I'm going to be exactly like my mom. I'm going to be worse!
We went to the British Museum, and I was looking up my family in the books - pages and pages on it.
I'm looking forward to providing the men of Seattle with an evening where they can kick back, light up a cigar and enjoy a night to themselves. Women, we can't technically keep you out, but please stay at home.
