When my first film 'The Seventh Continent' was presented here 12 years ago, non-Austrian spectators would come up to me and say, 'Is Austria that terrible?', whereas for me it wasn't about Austria but about highly industrialised cultures everywhere.
When somebody wants to interview me, I've always got something to say.
I will say this: In order for the planet to survive, there are going to be acts of ecoterrorism.
Sometimes I say things that I think are obviously sarcastic and people take them quite literally.
What I want to say is that nobody is unbeatable. There's a kid out there who probably wants to beat me. I train hard and try to be the best that I can be, but I don't disrespect my opponents. I am not disillusioned, either.
People do look at it as an insult that I say I don't listen to country music, which cracks me up.
They say in baseball, your little flaws will stick with you from the start. It's just how you can maintain and minimize them.
I'm wary of artistic directors who say, 'Here is my vision', because it's empirical. Basically it's about who you work with and what plays you put on; the vision comes out of that.
Watergate got us to think of leaders as mere mortals. America began to think of itself in a very different way - I would say a salutary way - and Reagan was most important in shifting the grand dynamic thrust of the American historical process by ending that.
When I talk to young people who want to go to Broadway or whatever, I say, 'The highs are very high and the lows are very low and then there is a lot in between.'
Fiscally I'm very conservative... others say that I'm socially moderate.
Nudity... I have to say I will never do it again.
I don't think of myself as a rebel; I just say what I think.
I have to say, if someone literally said to me, 'You're going off to a desert island, what is the one thing you would bring?' I would say, 'It's my concealer or you can just kill me now.' I've thought this through! Because I would find, like, berries in a bowl and make blush.
I'd rather be involved and somebody say, 'Hey, coach, here's what I need you to do. Go down to the D-League and work with guys'... I want the D-League coach to learn how to be a head coach.
Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties.
I would say that regardless of how the brand has been created, we are four hard-working women who have succeeded in making our dream to become artists a more possible reality through this.
I used to say that I didn't want anything to do with e-mail. It seemed really impersonal, complicated and weird. I had no idea what an amazing way it is to reach people.
I was always more interested in my books and my writing than going out. It's OK to say I'm a nerd. That's me.
Faced with a deep recession, some say the answer is to expand the role of government.
Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races.
I can look at cancer as a disease that picks me out and 'why me,' or I can look at it through love and say, 'This is a wake-up call. This is my body telling me: 'Hey, you're out of balance here. It's time to get in line with yourself.'
You should wake up in the morning and say, 'What do I want to do today? What's going to make me happy?'
I have no time for political hacks who say things they don't believe because they get paid to.
Since too few Americans go to the polls, I say what this country needs is a bobblehead election, where voters will get free bobblehead dolls of their choice when they show up and vote for president.
I mean, artistic processes are all about making choices all the time, and the very act of making a choice is the distilling down and the getting to the core of what it is that you care about and what you want to say, really.
I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat.
Some people say hybrid vehicles such as the Prius are only a bridge to the future ... but we think it could be a long bridge and a very sturdy one. There are many more gains we can achieve with hybrids.
Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want to raise taxes on the rich, saying it will solve inequality. It won't. All that will do is significantly reduce incentives to work, save, and invest. But I say inequality is not the problem. The problem is a lack of growth.
I know I mispronounce things constantly, because maybe I read more than I talk, but I don't know the proper way to say a lot of things, even though I know what they are. But then I know I look like a moron.
First time I walked out on the Opry stage, Vince Gill was there. He kind of 'daddied' me through the whole thing. My knees were knocking. I walked out there, and I was literally shaking. They say it's the spirits or the ghosts. And out of respect for that whole establishment, I was really really nervous.
I think that one of the things that we have to recognize is that the longer somebody doesn't have a job, the harder it is to get a new job. You know, the reality is that if you're out of job, and you're looking for a job, then the new employer's going to say, 'Well, why, you know, don't you have a job now? What's wrong with you?'
The high-grossing films are not all that interesting to me, I have to say. It's not stuff I would want to be in. Yes, you would want the big paycheck, but that's never really been my concern.
I love readings and my readers, but the din of voices of the audience gives me stage fright, and the din of voices inside whisper that I am a fraud, and that the jig is up. Surely someone will rise up from the audience and say out loud that not only am I not funny and helpful, but I'm annoying, and a phony.
The height of success is when you break your business, that is what I say! Just when you think things are really, really going well, that's the time to change.
We say arts education is good for general education, but that's not the point. The arts are what great nations are remembered for. They are a mirror.
