I think art comes out of meaningful experiences, and it's hard to make art when your meaningful experience is getting into your electric car and driving from your fancy house in the Hills to your fancy job in the Valley.
I was doing the 'Vogue' fashion awards when I was 16, live on VH1. I was coming down the steps, and I'm a really hard walker. I hadn't had a mistake yet in my career. Everything had been perfect. So I come down the steps on live TV, and I slip. I didn't fall, but you could see the look on my face. I was mortified. I was devastated.
My career had fallen into an abyss because I was so complacent with things that I had already accomplished. I did not work hard in order to achieve more and to remain at the level of the player that I am and that I can be.
My accent has changed my whole life. When I was younger, it was very Nigerian, then when we went to England, it was very British. I think I have a very strange, hybrid accent, and I've worked very hard to get a solid American accent, which is what I use most of the time.
In places where money comes out of the ground, luck and a willingness to take risks are the main denominators that determine one's future, not talent or education or hard work. Money that is so easily acquired somehow comes to seem well deserved, because those who have it must be either uniquely perspicacious or divinely favored.
I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'
With my son, I tried not to be so judgmental and tried not to push him so hard. I didn't want him to feel that everything or that our love for him will be based on how much he has achieved.
It was not hard for me to find guidance and motivation. I'm very blessed, and my parents were always so supportive of myself and my brother. Whatever you wanted to do, you just had to give 110 percent. So whatever that was, they supported it.
Cooking a piece of fish and cooking it right. Knowing the fish, knowing the properties of the fish. That's a hard thing to do rather than covering it with a lot of sauces and foams or other cooking methods that might be high wire acts and look good on the outside.
It's hard for people sometimes to relate to me. They weren't in the military, they weren't injured overseas in Iraq, they weren't burned, they didn't go through 33 surgeries, or two and a half years in the hospital.
I was a virgin. People find that hard to believe, but when you're raised in a church, that was just the way it is.
The last thing you want is to not be recognized for all of the hard work you put in.
'An Unquiet Mind' wasn't hard to write in terms of the actual writing of it.
My uniform is sweatpants, so crusted over with dried paint that they're as hard as a table. I wear T-shirts that are also covered in paint, and Crocs.
I don't ever feel like I have to stop myself from complaining about how hard it is to be an actress. I mean, it's not that hard.
Why young men from the country become firefighters is hard to explain to people who are not from the country. For most of us, it's not about the rush, which fades with time, or the paycheck. We could earn more working for the railroad or a car dealership. I figure it's about the land.
I had to push exposition through dialogue, which is really, really hard for an actor do.
I think most fiction writers naturally start by writing short stories, but some of us don't. When I first started writing, I just started writing a novel. It's a hard way to learn to write. I don't recommend it to my students, but it just happens that way for some of us.
My mum and dad are both sportspeople and know what's it all about. They know it's hard work, but they also know what it takes to become a professional athlete. I don't think - without their help, I wouldn't have got this far.
Touring is hard on the body.
Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be.
Single mums do come in for a hard time. Society is incredibly judgmental. I know this.
I can only be me. I have a hard time being a chameleon as a singer.
Throughout the 40 years I've been in Washington, I've always worked hard, particularly with regards to the budget issues.
It's very hard to lose someone who's the closest person to you in your life.
I mean there's enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world - within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see.
If you're a woman, just make a freaking good movie. I don't believe in the women who say, 'It's too hard, I'm getting shot down.'
In the first two episodes, before she becomes Queen, I could be a lot freer with my emotions, but as the series goes on, she develops an armour in order to cope with her circumstances. She has to be a sphinx, which must be so hard. Imagine never being able to shout, 'Shut up,' or cry, even in front of your own family.
Even though it's hard to learn how to back your car out the driveway at first, once it becomes a habit, you can do it almost automatically and think about something else, like the meeting that you need to go to today or what's on the radio.
Life is hard, and a lot of people come home tired from work. If they're gonna spend half an hour reading, they want some entertainment and a sense of achievement. So that's what I give them. That's all I'm trying to do. Is that really so wrong?
It's hard for me when I'm not getting on base too much. I feel like I'm not contributing to the ball club. When I'm on base, I'm making stuff happen; that's more energy for the ball club.
No matter how talented you are or naturally gifted you are, there's no substitute to hard work if you got to maintain standards.
Even to this day, when I think about the fact that I'm in this 'Star Wars' world, that I'm a half-brother to Darth Vader and an uncle to Luke Skywalker, it's too hard to wrap my head around.
All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the Seventies sounds nothing like the stuff from the Eighties, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the Nineties. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?
It feels like a dream come true, being a Bond girl. I feel like a princess. It's hard to believe it when I say, 'I'm a Bond girl.'
I've had the privilege of meeting and/or interviewing most of the top metal and hard rock artists at various points in my career and sharing their stories and music with millions of fans on air through TV and radio.