It's sort of well-known that anytime any catastrophe happens anywhere in the world, they can count on the United States for help.
Since then, I have just read and read - but, that said, I suppose there is a raft of writers to whom I return again and again, not so much because I want to write like them, even if I were capable of it, but simply for a sort of stylistic shot in the arm.
If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.
As an artist, I'm very used to waking up and sort of not knowing what my day's going to be and not knowing where my next paycheck is going to come from.
We are extremely private, and we really got sort of ambushed by the notoriety.
Music is one of those things that is constantly going in my head all the time. It's sort of like the evolution and creation of doing food, or my philosophy about wine. It's always beating in my head, so it keeps the spirit moving.
I was experiencing all the success the entertainment industry has to offer, but I knew there had to be something more. It was sort of through that God prepared me to hear about His great plan.
I played a lot of mothers before I even became a mother. It wasn't like I set out to be some sort of mother crusader.
We're more into sort of fluid structures that are simultaneously the most efficient, the most beautiful, and the most engineered. You know what I mean? We like the balance you can get in there.
I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.
At the time of Polaroid - and I did a couple of other commercials just before I stopped doing that stuff - at that point I was at the level where they respect you and your opinion and all that sort of thing.
I'm appalled that when I talk about the neo-conservatives it's somehow twisted, some sort of a racist comment.
I wasn't at all sure I could make that sort of leap into that sort of comic book reality.
We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.
Bloggers and stores and publications and brands and houses all need to sort of take a deep breath and relax because no one is going away. The brands aren't going away. The designers, bloggers, publications aren't going away.
I'm playing to the sort of people who like the same records.
In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn't actually doing any writing.
I was really inspired while I was pregnant and I wrote a whole album for my baby. I wanted to write a kids album that didn't annoy parents. I used The Beatles 'Rocky Raccoon' as sort of a starting place for my writing.
Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.
What happens is that the people who are leaders in any field are copied. I mean, there's a reason why every wine newsletter tends to look like mine. They see someone who's been successful, so they sort of copy these same ideas.
Everything I do, I'm sort of half in, half out.
So now I feel I'm lucky in the respect that I can sort of pick a little more carefully, which is tricky because as a black actress, there aren't that many roles to pick from.
The rugs that I picked out and the pillows with the little owls, sort of like whimsical throw pillows - I feel like you can never enough whimsical throw pillows in your house, in your life. My husband probably disagrees.
I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.
When I started writing, I didn't have the common sense to use a pseudonym, so I write under my own name. If I did have a pen name, though, it would be something very historical - something that sounds very sort of Regency... Sophia something.
Sometimes when things are way too big and I can't control it, I do sort of a weird thing where I kind of check out a little bit. It's all about self-preservation for me.
I've learned to wait 'til an idea is worth making. That's not really a lesson I've learned; I sort of always did it that way. But there's no reason or need to make videos prior to when you make a show, because then you need material for it.
I'm a great believer in the novelist being 'on the scene,' reporting, traveling, meeting all sorts of people.
I really love sort of classical cinema where people were telling stories with very little dialogue, and people were using the camera in a really interesting way.
Sometimes, what's not said is just as important to the writing as what is said. As a writer, we have our voices heard. I think that, at oftentimes, the ability to allow the dialogue to recede properly into the world of the film is also a really valid sort of way to be a writer, I think.
I think I have sort of gravitated toward issues that I don't know the answers to, because that's what's more interesting for me to write.
When we did the pilot, I sort of pictured this guy pirating a signal and then this story unfolding of him building this satellite and these robots and watching these bad movies.
I've often said in the past that I thought MTV was sort of evil incarnate and signified the beginning of the end. And I don't know if I'm entirely wrong about that, but they did sign my paychecks a year ago, so I guess I'm part of the problem.
Over the years, my marks on paper have landed me in all sorts of courts and controversies - I have been comprehensively labelled; anti-this and anti-that, anti-social, anti-football, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-republican, anti-American, anti-Australian - to recall just an armful of the antis.
When I look at it now, the whole punk thing is sort of comedy in a weird way.
My sister, she's amazing. She sort of inspired me to take this journey to Latin America.
