My mom brought me up to believe that my talent is a gift and a blessing.
Wherever there's an all-encompassing 'always,' 'all' or 'never' in your life, it's a sign that your mischievous subconscious is setting you up for failure by consistently leading you back toward these repeat performances.
That New York energy, when you've got the benefit of great weather, it really is terrific. You look up at that skyline, and the Empire State Building is literally in your eyesight - there's nothing like that.
I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.
I don't feel old or used up, and I don't have time to waste thinking about aging, because I live only for my cause.
Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.
Some people have been talking about - every place I go, they bring up the issue of foreign aid. I go, 'You can't get rid of all foreign aid.'
You know, I remember Career Day in high school. I remember plumbers and lawyers... I don't remember a booth where you could sign up to learn how to shoot chickens out of a cannon at the windshield of an airplane, 'cause there would have been a line at my school to do that!
I listened very, very carefully to the world around me to pick up the signals of when trouble was coming. Not that I could stop it. But it made me observant. That was helpful when I became a lawyer, because I knew how to read people's signals.
I never really thought it out. I just woke up one day, and I was involved in all these projects. They just seemed to involve animals.
It is extremely rewarding for me to be recognised by the University of Aberdeen. This is where I grew up and nurtured my dreams.
Emotionally, shows like 'Cheers' and 'Taxi' were classic sitcoms when I was growing up.
When I started at the 'Guardian,' though, I couldn't think of anything we saw eye to eye on, except feminism, and even this would soon be arguable as 'Guardian' writers queued up to drool over Eminem.
If I'm sure of a person and his potential in politics, and if I know he will live up to his promises, I wouldn't mind campaigning for him. I believe in the dictum, 'never say never.' You never know, I might end up joining politics.
The way that 'Vampire' was born was over a lunch. We got asked to do the show. A week later, we were hired. A week later, we were writing it. The minute we handed it in, it was ordered. The minute we shot it, it was picked up. Then we started working. There was never any, like, 'OK, here's what this show is...' We had to figure it out as we went.
As a storyteller, you have to have something to say. You have to look at the world, think about it in relationship to yourself, and say, 'I think this is a pattern,' or 'I think this is the way fatherhood works,' or 'I think this is the way first love feels.' The danger in that is, that's when you open yourself up to real critique.
So, I guess motherhood and the threat of not being able to pay my rent inspired me to be a novelist. But as far as what inspired me to be a writer, it's the stories. It sounds very cliched, but the stories rise up and demand to be told. They always have done, long before I became a writer.
I've grown up with a piano in the house, and that's where I started to be able to learn things by ear. Guitar kind of happened, and I was using it just for writing at first. Then, I was writing so much that I began to realise that I knew how to play, and that's when I started getting nerdy about it.
Whether you like me or you don't, I still dig showing up for work.
Growing up, I was never the kind of girl to dream about wedding dresses and pretty houses.
I did a lot of theater growing up, and in college I was in the musical 'Chicago.'
I couldn't pick up a sword and go fight anyone, let me put it that way. It's choreography and it's acting. The best sword fights you see look amazing, but it's the acting that sells it more than anything.
You wanna know what scares people? Success. When you don't make moves and when you don't climb up the ladder, everybody loves you because you're not competition.
As for writing novels - it's what I've done for 30 some-odd years. I can't suddenly say I'm going to take up golf. I need something in my life. As long as I can write a coherent sentence, I'll keep at it.
When you hold things back, when you don't commit completely to your ideas and trust completely in your own instincts, you are guaranteeing your own failure - even if you end up having commercial success.
If I'm going to wind up playing left, I want to be the best left fielder in the game. I'll work to be that.
If you want to appeal to everyone, you can't do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date - when you're in Australia, when you're in Dubai, when you're in Indonesia.
The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone.
We didn't have any solution to the world's problems. I mean, we were trying to grow up in a socialist way to some future where the world might be less of a miserable place than it is.
People just wanna talk. They wanna create negative things about you and your life and make up things. You can't let them affect you!
And the Russians certainly don't have it. If a woman shows up in a fur coat, I just assume she's a crook. And that's me, the nice American. The assumption that you can't make money honestly is a killer.
As the first Hispanic female governor in history, little girls often come up to me in the grocery store or the mall. They look and point, and when they get the courage, they ask 'Are you Susana?' and they run up and give me a hug.
I was raised in a very activist household so that I grew up surrounded by people who were activists.
The Grammy snuck up on me. I was on tour. It just hit me. I skipped down the street in Vienna. I kept saying, 'I won. I won.'
In life, if you're not learning from every experience, even the bad ones, you're really messing up. That's the marker of a smart, intelligent individual.
My uncle inspired me, and it was because of him that I become a wrestler, but besides him, the one Superstar that really caught my attention growing up as a kid was 'Macho Man' Randy Savage.
