One of the things that people complain about is loneliness, disconnectedness. If you live in a society where your life is rarely threatened and most of your relationships are more on an economic exchange basis, then this could leave people feeling less connected.
My style has been nurtured over time. It's more about knowing what doesn't suit you. I love suits and anything sharp, and I know that shape suits me. I don't feel feminine in floaty dresses with spaghetti straps - I feel more like Freddie Mercury in drag.
When you write non-fiction, you sit down at your desk with a pile of notebooks, newspaper clippings, and books and you research and put a book together the way you would a jigsaw puzzle.
I don't believe in the transformation myth, where if you have more success, life changes for you.
We used to say poor people had lousy genes. Then we decided that wasn't OK, but we transferred the prejudice to upbringing. We said, 'You were neglected as a child, so you'll never make it.' That's just as pernicious.
So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.
My mother is old-fashioned; she raised us like girls from a 19th-century book. My sisters and I are known for being the most polite girls in France. My mother wanted us to be like royalty: never ever will you be caught being rude, or superficial or being a star or whatever.
One of the benefits to ordering food in New York is that you can get food 24/7.
Singing is a way of releasing an emotion that you sometimes can't portray when you're acting. And music moves your soul, so music is the source of the most intense emotions you can feel.
Once you privatize something, it becomes a for-profit business.
If you go into any physics lab, everybody is depressed and feels isolated. We don't get any feedback that anybody cares about what we're doing.
When I hurt Norton, I got scared. I looked to the referee. But in the same sense, you're a fighter: you gotta have the killer instinct.
You only have to worry about going to jail if you break the law. That's pretty simple.
I know a bit about selling books, and you need a good title - a catchy concoction with a little Cajun spice, something that will make folks stop in the aisles, turn away from the Grisham novels and the latest crazy diet fad, and pick up your masterpiece.
Housework never really bothered me... what bothered me about it later was that it was expected to be your life... when you're a housewife, you are constantly interrupted. You have no space in your life. It isn't the fact that you do the laundry.
You can't trust your memory. You change it to suit yourself.
I think character is very much a product of where you live, who you are, what is happening in that time of your life, and I'm interested in those pressures, those forces. A political context, a social context, really determines if not who people are then how they treat one another and what they say, how they speak.
I want you to take away the hope because that's the thing that's killing me.
It's a physical thing that can grab a hold of data and literally rearrange our lives by changing the direction you take your car in. This continuum is going to keep building on itself as we move forward into the future.
I had to take false steps and go through hard times to come out to where I am now. I can't imagine living without acting. It's not easy, and I don't disrespect anyone who steps out of it after a certain point. Having a family and a house is cool. It's not a betrayal. But if you're going to be an actor, it has to be more than a passing interest.
Entertainment is very close to religion in this country. If you buy the hype, it can be very dangerous.
I was not very strong growing up, and my uncle used to look at me, like, 'This kid is not growing up, he is growing tall but he can be broken like a banana.' The banana in Congo is called 'Dikembe.' So my uncle start calling me, 'Dikembe, Dikembe, look at you Dikembe, you cannot even stand up.' It took a long time for me to walk.
We try to entertain first, advertise second. When you find out that it's sponsored, we've already won you over. We try to make it obvious that the brand has made it better.
The problem was the journalists who also did not understand much of my music, but they wrote about it. I think you fell into the usual trap laid out by parts of the press and other writers: that the poor musician has always to fight the evil companies and managers.
You cannot defeat an enemy you do not admit exists.
When you lose a couple of times, it makes you realize how difficult it is to win.
When you constantly revisit things, it's hard to know if you're freezing in time or if you're a brilliant adult who's working through it. I think about that in therapy, talking about the same things over and over again.
If life is a video game, then most of us have no chance of winning, if by winning you mean succeeding in a quest or saving a princess.
Chris Matthews can't start any sentence without 'Let me ask you this... ' And I love Chris Matthews! But almost everybody in journalism does it. Who's stopping you? Just say it!
Some people go off to an ashram or they, you know, have a midlife crisis and buy a sports car. For me, I do 'Hedwig,' and I see it's a midlife crisis maybe, and I see what's next. And it's a good trampoline, maybe, into the next part of my life.
To have hundreds of people from every political and demographic group you can imagine coming out day after day to take part in the national health care debate is fantastic.
I think part of maturity is knowing who you are.
I love flying so much. I even like airplane food. No one bothers you and your phone never goes off and you can't have emails go through. It's undisturbed.
I will waste an extraordinary amount of time, you know. And if it's not watching television, I'll be sitting staring out of the window. And yes, I know there's the idea of the artist, sitting there doing nothing while things are going on, but actually, no. It's vacant space. I'm thinking about the laundry.
There's nothing more Broadway than 'Hedwig.' It's very family-friendly. There's innuendo and stuff, but not more than you'd see on TV.
Occasionally, when you do a take, and - what I kind of sort of like is asking for a PPB - Personal Play Back.
