My sights have always been on acting, on the creative process, never the lifestyle. Growing up in Northern Ireland when I did, everything was against you if you wanted to do something like that. But I was determined.
I love Rihanna. She represents that strong, independent woman that you cannot keep down.
The actresses I've known support each other very much. If you have a level of confidence in what you're doing, then you don't feel threatened. We all have different things to offer.
I don't function well in certain aspects of society, and you can read into that what you will.
On 'Masters of Sex,' especially in the pilot, everybody was showing up word-perfect, and you're expected to show up word-perfect.
Well, there's nothing more touching than putting a smile on a kid's face when you can.
When I see someone for the first time in a while, and they ask, 'How have you been?' or 'What have you been up to?', it's politeness but a bit of a conversation stopper.
Great actors are so easy to direct. It's like they're big 747s that you just have to move left and right, and I don't really need to direct. I need to put them in the right costume, with the right haircut, in the right location, and with the right actor to act with. And then my job is almost done, with a great script, obviously.
You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide.
I am usually cooking at least four times a week if I am home. The easiest thing that I do a lot is gazpacho. It's simple and it tastes best if you let it sit over night in the refrigerator... I don't want anybody near me when I am cooking. If I am going to make a mistake, it has to be my fault.
If you knew my life and understood where I came from, you would agree that Auntie Anne's, Inc. is a modern day business miracle.
It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word 'pessimist' was not in our vocabulary at that time. It's a modern 'invention' which I believe we should 'dis-invent.'
When you're six years old, the word 'poo' is the funniest word on God's earth, but this insults my intelligence.
Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.
There isn't an amount of money you could offer me to do reality TV. I would rather get my job back on the building site. Or I could own a construction business. Maybe I could retire to my house in Long Island and take up painting, like Captain Beefheart. A crazy recluse: I like that idea.
It's dangerous to buy into praise and criticism for what you do when you're trying to present your music to people. I don't ignore it completely, but I don't dwell on it too much.
What I will say is that business is not a nice area. And you might say that I am a business woman, but I'm not into cut-throat business moves.
Is it or is it not ethical to create an embryo, and to create a person for the purpose of getting an organ to give to someone else? Your knee-jerk reaction is 'absolutely not;' but you need the ethical analysis of that to show why and how that is something that you need to stay away from.
Tina Fey writes crazy, off-color, racist, hilarious stuff for '30 Rock,' but it's always funny because you're in this almost two-dimensional world where there's Jenna Maroney and these over-the-top characters. That's the framework.
The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
I'd much rather be in a movie that people have really strong feelings about than one that makes a hundred million dollars but you can't remember because it's just like all the others.
You had better love the music... because sometimes the music doesn't love you.
If someone wants to marry you outside the temple, whom will you strive to please - God or a mortal? If you insist on a temple marriage, you will be pleasing the Lord and blessing the other party.
A lot of times, working in stand up, you're by yourself, and so you just have to rely on yourself only... but I like working in an ensemble.
I'd always sing 'Greatest Love of All' by Whitney Houston. I just want to make clear, though, you know those people on 'Star Search' who are the little 7-year-olds that sound like Christina Aguilera? That wasn't me.
I'm quite hypercritical of myself. It's a very Scottish thing, always thinking that you've got to be that bit better than everyone else to be good enough.
I know I'm not going to book everything I go in on, and that's just the nature of the business. You have to keep hustling and not get down on it. You have to keep at it and find your way in. Everybody's story is different.
Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.
Well, you know, the definition of second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
Coming back from doing 'The Hobbit,' you think 'Sherlock' is realistic, but of course, it's not that realistic.
There's always the standard six people you can hire that have played all these villains in Hollywood. Instinctively, when they come on screen, you know what's going to happen. You don't know the story, but you know what they do.
I'm not a racist, and I'm not a murderer.
I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.
If you want to become fully mature in the Lord, you must learn to love truth. Otherwise, you will always leave open a door of deception for the enemy to take what is meant to be yours.
If you create great opportunities, people around the world will come support your dream.
There was a terrible fear for me when I started writing, which was that if you'd been denied unbelievably tumultuous experience, you didn't have permission to write.
