I just like being on my own on trains, traveling. I spent all my pocket money travelling the London Underground and Southern Railway, what used to be the Western region, and in Europe as much as I could afford it. My parents used to think I was going places, but I wasn't, I was just travelling the trains.
My desire to be an artist really came out of being broke and unemployed and incapable of holding a job down. That's what it was driven by for sure.
I missed being onstage behind the microphone. After a while, it was hard to hear another voice singing my lyrics.
The best part about being a matchmaker is you are getting credits in heaven, as I really believe I work for God. The worst part is that matchmakers can often fix everyone up, all the way to the altar, but cannot find love themselves, so it is bittersweet.
You can't act being a boxer. It's like being on stage.
Every job has its downside. For example, being in a band; the travel part of it - getting picked up from your house in a car, going to the airport, getting on a plane, going from the airplane to a van, then going from the van to a hotel.
I don't have the ideal body type for BMX, but just with anything, you have your pros and your cons. And being small kind of allows me to maneuver through the other bigger riders and make passes they couldn't necessarily make.
I've been on 'Days' since I was 16, and being surrounded by such thin, gorgeous actresses made me so insecure and self-conscious.
This idea that the open exchange of information can have a positive global impact is being proven over and over again around the world nearly on a daily basis - and for Secretary Clinton to recognize that, I think, is a huge step.
Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.
I've been ripped for being too sensitive, but I do think people need to walk in another person's shoes before they accuse them of being too sensitive.
That's still the greatest high, that feeling of being in control of 2,000 people. It's me and them, and I like the odds. It's not even so much the funny. It's getting them quiet. In the quiet moments in '700 Sundays,' I just really love that they're getting moved.
That's the beautiful thing about being a father for the first time; it has really made me get my concentration levels in check.
The reason so many intelligent and creative people suffer from depression is that when you take the risk of being fully conscious, you open Pandora's box, and you can't close it again.
I'm far from being a consummate artist. I mean, this is just my first album, and the work is very new. I'm just beginning, and I'm certainly not worthy of demigod status. There's absolutely no danger of me reaching that.
Being in water makes me relax instantly.
I jabbered too much in class about all the Russian writers whom I admired for being, among other things, uncouth and somewhat humorously melodramatic, such as Gogol and Dostoyevsky, just as it was in my own household when I was growing up.
People think of fortune cookies as being Chinese, but in essence, they are fundamentally American.
The hidden child wants to be able to participate and to co-create in art, rather than being simply an admiring viewer.
I don't know - sometimes I catch myself being dark, and it's annoying. I think, 'Get over it.' I bore myself. But sometimes, like everybody, I'm sure I am obsessive.
Luck can often mean simply taking advantage of a situation at the right moment. It is possible to make your luck by being always prepared.
I have no illusions of being the big box office draw. But I would like to have some choices.
At the end of the day, I know that I would rather be alone and occasionally lonely and unhappy than in a miserable marriage and lonely and unhappy all the time. I don't mind being single. In fact, I like it.
Being a writer - even a best-selling one - is usually not anywhere near as public as being a movie star, at least not when I'm out in 'real life' like this. Not that I don't use what fame I have, every chance I get, to help sell more books.
It was incredible being on tour with Taylor Swift: she was the epitome of a professional, and she works so hard. For someone as successful as her to work that hard every night - truly inspirational.
Being an only child and losing both my parents at an early age, I have found that the friends I have made over the years are the people who help me get through life, good times and bad.
Pageants were a platform for me, and they helped me get to where I am today. You suddenly stop being just another girl, and people want to listen to what you have to say.
I believe that the ability to talk to people and have them feeling engaged rather than patronised isn't something you can learn. It's a bit like being able to sing or play cricket. You can either do it, or you can't.
A lot of hard work has to go into your career, and preparation, and being your best at all times.
And the American public was able to make up their own mind whether this verdict was a just verdict or not. So I think there's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works or doesn't work, so I think there's a definite value there.
I'm not after having the lead or being in a blockbuster Hollywood film. I'm after reading the material and loving it. That's all.
The idea of money being something physical is almost entirely a fiction. Sure, you can go to your ATM and pull out cash. And you can feel cash in your back pocket and have some tangible comfort there - but in reality, the majority of your money is a number on a screen.
I was sick of being articulate and loud and charming. I didn't want to play that guy anymore. I wanted to play the absolute opposite of that.
I do strongly identify with being Jewish. I was raised Orthodox and had a childhood complicated by the fact that my father was deeply religious and my mother was not.
In America we tell our parents to bring their child home and put him or her in a crib; as they get older, children sleep in they own room not in Mom and Dad's room. What are we training them for? It's independence, because that's what being empowered is all about.
I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around.
