LL Cool J was a rapper-turned-actor, and I also relate to him because he was sort of a ladies' man and had a female fan base, but yet he's a positive dude. You never read about him getting into trouble or going to jail.
I'm not a really religious person, but those moments onstage feel like some sort of religious experience because no one holds back, especially 'Stay With Me' when I finish the show. It kind of turns into an anthem when I perform it live, and it feels like there's a lot of love in the room.
It's a wonderful sort of feeling when people want to spend more time in a world you created.
Thank God I've never had the sort of intense fame that means you can't walk up the road. That sort of blazing stardom must be difficult to cope with and maintain; my career has just bubbled along happily.
We were always in church, and always singing, so once I realized that music was something that I had a knack for, I sort of latched onto it, and it helped give me an identity and figure out who I was as a person. It informed my way into theater, which informed my way into television.
Without really trying to, I've become a sort of jailhouse lawyer of relationships - someone who's had to do so much work on her own case that I can now help you with yours.
We are concerned with that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names - liberals, leftists, etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country's 'inhumanity to the black man.'
I think all girls in the world wish they were a Parisian girl - that sort of effortless chic confidence and comfort in their own skin.
When I write, I'm sort of old-fashioned in the sense that I like to write something that I feel I could just perform alone, obviously, because I do that a lot in concert.
I spent a lot of time thinking that I was some kind of foundling, that I had been a changeling, that I had been found under a bush somewhere, and that I couldn't possibly be kin - but the more I live, the more I feel absolutely like I come out of my family. I'm a sort of strange natural progression.
Some people fascinate me. They really worship at the altar of their careers, you know? And it's terrifying. It's sort of like setting a table and waiting for someone to come along and whoosh - push all the plates onto the floor.
When I work onstage, I want to play roles that have real, deep theatricality, that aren't the sort you would easily see on television and in the movies.
Most people are sort of against authority. Here's Beetle always challenging authority. I think people relate to it.
Probably my favorite piece of music, as an album taken as a whole, is Bruce Springsteen's 'Greetings from Asbury Park.' I just think it's incredibly pure. It's a sound that sort of broke new ground, and I think it paved the way for a hundred people that sound very similar.
I may have been lucky with some sort of intuition, but I believe in training a great deal.
I had an audition for Mary Jane Watson in 'Spiderman' and ended up playing Betty Brant in that series. I auditioned for Amy Adams' role in 'Catch Me If You Can' and, you know, ended up playing the bank teller. So there were a lot of times early on where I felt like I was always sort of the bridesmaid, never the bride - never quite right.
I've been approached many times to write all sorts of books about my past and my personal life. I get interest from people who want to do reality shows, and somebody just offered me a huge amount of money to write my spiritual memoirs. I'm just not interested.
I do feel my loved ones that have passed on; I feel them looking over my shoulder... So yeah, that's pretty profound, when you're not expecting it, you didn't particularly believe in it and then it just sort of happens too often to ignore.
Growing up in New York, I was sort of shocked when I realized that my children are Californians. They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day. You wake up and the world says, 'Oops, it's too much fun to go to school, you've got to stay home and deal with the snow!'
As a young child, I suffered all sorts of digestive problems and was constantly under the weather.
I grew up in Decatur, Georgia. We had three boys in the household; actually, it felt like four of us. My pops sort of raised my uncle, too. So, it was four boys and, later, a younger sister.
I suppose I'm always looking for a sort of acuity of perception either in my characters or about my characters.
One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.
Our secret desire as women is to have a guy who falls madly in love with us even though we're incredibly opinionated or we're not the sort of normal, polite, poised woman.
When I was a young teenager, it was all about The Clash for me and that sort of English punk stuff. Then the Clash led me to all these other kinds of music: classic rock, Stevie Wonder, world music, and Brazilian music. I got serious about jazz when I was probably about 14 or 15.
Created by writer Beau Willimon, who's worked on several political campaigns, 'House of Cards' cannily exploits the current widespread cynicism for our politics, catering to a public scorn that's warranted and also glib in the sort of cheap pox-on-both-houses way that means not having to pay attention.
Gorillas have a belch vocalization, which is sort of like, 'I'm OK, you're OK.' They do a pig grunt, which is reprimanding. They sing, they laugh, and they hoot, which grows into a chest-beating display.
It seems so absurd to get really mad with a cartoonist over a comic strip. It's sort of like getting in a fight with a circus clown outside your house. It's not going to end well.
I went into academia thinking that there'd be constant reciprocity between my scholarship and my creative work but found that doing one always turned my mind into the sort of tool that was badly suited to doing the other.
25, 30 years ago, that meant something, they were making some money. And they were doing all sorts of comedy, screaming at the audience, basically crowd control. And then there was the whole urban comedy scene.
Google helps us sort the Internet by providing a sense of hierarchy to information. Facebook uses its algorithms and its intricate understanding of our social circles to filter the news we encounter. Amazon bestrides book publishing with its overwhelming hold on that market.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.
There's no sort o' mistake in little Bullet. He can pick up miles on his feet, and fling 'em behind him as fast as the next man's hoss, I don't care where he comes from. And he can keep at it as long as the sun can shine without resting.
Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world, the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to, like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.
My parents came from Calcutta. They arrived in Cambridge, much like the parents in my novel. And I found myself sort of caught between the world of my parents and the world they had left behind and still clung to, and also the world that surrounded me at school and everywhere else, as soon as I set foot out the door.
