I have three brothers and one sister, and I'm the third child. Sometimes people say, 'It's only natural you would become a writer - your parents were English professors.' But my four siblings were brought up in the exact same household, and no one else became a writer or an English professor.
You cry and you scream and you stomp your feet and you shout. You say, 'You know what? I'm giving up, I don't care.' And then you go to bed and you wake up and it's a brand new day, and you pick yourself back up again.
All novelists I speak to about how they started usually say it was by pulling up their roots and going to live somewhere else. You see the shape of your life at a distance.
Even when writing your own poems, you need to talk to people; you need to magpie around, getting words and things. I'm very against the celebrity culture that wants to say: 'this is a genius, this is one person who has done something brilliant.' There are always a hundred people in the background who have helped to make it.
As an adult, I'll give a writer 50 pages. If the book doesn't interest me in 50 pages, I'll say the heck with it - there are just too many other things to read. A child won't give you 50 pages.
I will remember this day for the rest of my life. There is nothing you can say. It's just like you won the match after the earthquake and it just feels great.
You've got to let it go and say it was the best I could do at that time and place in my life. You hope that the thing you're doing next is a little bit better.
If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.
Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it's also disingenuous to say, 'We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.'
I don't go to bed at 1 A.M. and wake up at 5 A.M. and say, 'Let's see if I can get this done today.'
You know how in most teenage movies the girl meets the boy, they kiss, they have some type of fallout, then there's an awkward sex scene, and then they're together forever? And they say the perfect things the whole way? That doesn't happen in real life.
Their crew for 'Arrow' is just one of the most wonderful crews that I've worked with. I know that actors say that all the time, and it sounds like trash coming out of my own mouth, but it's so true.
I really believe that anybody on the Left or the Right that tries to invoke the teachings of Jesus to say they should vote for this candidate or that candidate, I think they're stretching Scripture.
I always felt like I was stuck in between my parents, relaying information back and forth and walking on egg shells, not knowing what was going to trigger something to make them mad and not knowing what to say in front of them.
When I go about my own politics, I meet Tea Party supporters who I can work with in Congress, that I find common ground with. I find Tea Party supporters who won't let me get a sentence out without judging me. To say that there is a 'Tea Party supporter' is a gross generality.
And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you're going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them and even if you don't agree with them.
People come up to me and say, 'It's too bad the space program got canceled.' This is not the case, and yet that is what most of the public thinks has happened.
To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War Two.
I guess you could say I have bad taste in men. But I no longer feel the need to be someone's wife.
I'm so happy to have done this, and now I can say I ran the New York City Marathon.
I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.
People have responded to my stories so well. They come up after a show and say things like, 'Your album really helped me,' or 'I have stage four cancer. I'm terminally ill.' Somebody told me it gave them the courage to die.
I was very proud to be at 'The Wall Street Journal'. I have nothing bad to say about it. I had a great run there. In what turned out to be the final years of my tenure there, 'AllThingsD' occupied me more and more and was much more fun.
I don't get embarrassed by the same things that other people do. I would say that probably the biggest thing that holds people back is, 'If I do this, I'm going to look like an idiot if it doesn't work out.'
I always say that in my career as an actress, I've always worked with people like David Lynch or Guy Maddin or Peter Weir who are considered not mainstream directors and that could be because they are like my dad. They are pioneers, and pioneers, by definition, invent something new.
There are people who've enjoyed my work in the theater, and they let me know that it was special for them. I'm not going to say, 'Well, you should have seen me as Gandalf!'
I don't have a problem to say I am a good merchandiser, because I love objects.
What do most people say on their deathbed? They don't say, 'I wish I'd made more money.' What they say is, 'I wish I'd spent more time with my family and done more for society or my community.'
I am an outspoken person. I believe in what I say.
I always say, 'I love producing, but directing is my passion,' and for a while, I had to produce to support my directing habit.
I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.
I swim. I do a little bit of surfing. I would say I'm a beginner at surfing. I run. I cycle. I play a little bit of soccer.
Puerto Ricans, it doesn't matter where they live, it doesn't matter how long it's been since they visited the island, their hearts are there. If you keep them informed, and if you say to them, 'This is important for Puerto Rico, go and call your congressman,' they do it. They do it.
People would say to me, 'Who do you want to be as an artist?' And I would just look at them because I didn't know.
I really don't think of my work in terms of a genre. I think of it in terms of what I want to say, what I think is cool, and what I'm good at.
I'd rather try and cram in another two gags than leave a pause to say, 'Hey, wasn't that bit funny?'