It's nice to be in a situation where the two books that I write for a sort of regular monthly income are also works that I enjoy immensely, rather than them being some kind of bread and butter, do it because you have to do it.
It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.
I can't even consider the prospect of grandchildren because I don't know if there will be anything left for them on Earth. That's how serious the problem is. We can't drink the water or breathe the air, and we're all dying from some sort of cancer. How many generations can sustain that? It frightens me terribly.
We need a country that embraces all, and rewards innovators, entrepreneurs, job creators, and hard-working people of all sorts.
You don't go to Berkeley to become an actor. In fact, I don't think you go to any school to become an actor. You've just sort of got to go out there and act.
Me being a shy kid, very closed off, showing vulnerability in a character was sort of a safe space on stage. It's always been in my toolbox, there for me when I need it.
I find inspiration for my works of art in my studio and in the squared circle from all sorts of places.
I've never made a record that didn't sound better than what was in my head - that's sort of my rule.
I suppose with any character that you play you always bring your personal experience to it. You always bring people that you know or that you've met and sort of - this is what I do, I mean, I don't know what anyone else does - but people that you know or that you've met that have affected you in certain ways, you bring into it.
I get approached to do a lot of commissioned art. Sometimes I do it, but I usually don't, given the day job and everything I've sort of got going on. I'm really passionate about it; there's not that much time left over for the other commissioned projects.
I'm a huge fan of a lot of different genres of music, and I really felt like somehow I had been pigeonholed a little bit - maybe of my own doing - and in a way where I felt like I was sort of falsely defined. What my music was being called wasn't really the music I was always listening to.
Since I started acting, I've always been aware of the sort of 'beastly entity' that is America and Hollywood, and semi-consciously, I devised a kind of route in - I'd seen a lot of people try and fail.
A computer is a wonderful thing, but it's cold, and what comes out of it is sort of cold.
I've actually thought very little about solo work up until just very recently. Most of it is because in my band, Incubus, it is very much a collaborative effort. I do what I do in the band, and everyone plays their respective parts, but in the end, we are sort of a democratic process.
When China fails to live up to its obligations, we push back - sort of. We accept arguments from Chinese leaders that they are a developing country that needs time to reform.
Samuel L. Jackson is such a riot. He's so incredibly normal, and he's a blast to be around. I can't even describe to you how he's just sort of everybody's crazy uncle.
I grew up being a dancer, so I was always doing some sort of dance number, like the Tornado in 'The Wiz.'
What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life, you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called 'cliche.'
I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character.
I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on and many that I had no control over whatsoever.
Martyrdom is evidence only of a man's honesty - it is no evidence that he is not mistaken. Men have suffered martyrdom for all sorts of opinions in politics and in religion; yet they could not therefore have all been in the right; although they could give no stronger evidence that they believed themselves in the right.
Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.
I've had probably way too many acting classes, and you try to sort of shed - I think over a period of time, you'll shed what doesn't stick with you, and you'll hang onto those things that do.
I've been strongly opposed to racial discrimination and anything like that my whole life. Maybe it's thanks to my parents and where I grew up and that sort of thing, but particularly with gay and lesbian citizens, I've seen that people can be cruel, and it's very distressing.
I spend a lot of time in a sort of free state when I'm writing in the beginning and sketching.
I went to college and graduate school, studying philosophy. I really did think I was going to wind up being a lecturer or professor of some sort.
For the most part, it's a very male-dominated business. Most executives are male, so it's always sort of their vision of stuff. I'm constantly fighting against that, even when I play the wife or the girlfriend or the best friend. I always try my hardest to bring as much layering in and not make things stereotypical, but it's hard.
So often, we're expected to maintain some sort of standard - that won't get you where you need to go. One of the most daring things I've done is drop out of graduate school. I had no job, but something inside me was saying, 'Go! Be in the world!' I had to listen to myself, and it worked out. I still think, 'Who was that girl?'
I travel often, so my routine is always getting scrambled. But on a standard sort of day, I get up at 6, pack lunches, hustle the kids off to school, then brew a pot of coffee and head downstairs to the dungeon, as I call it: my cobwebby office in the basement.
I've definitely seen that Texas is certainly a right-wing area politically. I think if you talk to the average Texan, some people may still think that alternative energy is some sort of hippie mumbo-jumbo, you know. I think there's still a strong movement to continue to drill and continue to find these other sources of oil within the country.
I probably became an actor because of my vivid imagination, and doing voice-over really sort of takes me back to that.
My guitarist husband, Mike, and writer me are the old-fashioned kind of bohemians. Not 'fro-haired hipsters gyrating in iPod ads, but the sort who, starting January 1 of every year, literally don't know where their next dime is coming from.
A lot of comedies fall apart because they just go from joke to joke, and the characters are all sort of being crazy off on their own.
I was starting to buy into my own sort of stereotype in a way.
Although cover notes for classical music albums tend to say that the trill of flutes suggests mountain streams and so on, I don't think anybody listens to music with the expectation that they're going to be presented with a sort of landscape painting.
Well I've been crystal clear that we should not have schools which are set up by extremists whether they're Christian fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists or any other sort of outrageous and beyond the pale organization.
