With whatever talent and resources I have, I'm trying to bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel.
I feel more at home knowing I'm not really at home. It takes all the pressure off you trying to fit in!
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.
I'm happy I was able to stick through it and was being very disciplined with what I had to do, because I know eventually hard work will pay off. It's only a matter of now just trying to make sure I get matches under my belt and I feel more and more comfortable playing matches.
I'm trying to use the language of today to express a general existential crisis that I think the world and I are going through.
I've drunk Amazon's free Diet Coke. Nothing makes more sense to me than a company trying to make bookselling into a profitable business. I'm not anti-Amazon, and I'm not pro-publishers either. I'm pro-books.
Juggling work and parental responsibilities is no easy task, but I'm trying my best and just like everything else there are good days and there are bad days.
Ever since I became a Muslim, I've had to deal with attempts to damage my reputation and countless insinuations seeking to cast doubt on my character and trying to connect me to causes which I do not subscribe to.
I'm trying to communicate here. I'm a communicator, I like to communicate, and if a million people buy it then we've touched a million people, if only 10 people buy it, then we've only touched 10, and that's important, because I'm satisfied with only 10. But, I love a million.
America used to be proud of abstraction, and we have fallen away from it. The future depends on people trying to promote that abstract thinking. Not just in relation to music and jazz and the arts, but the economy, social strife, tension between people.
I'm from the suburbs, really, so I actually didn't go to Montreal until I was, like, 19. I wasn't allowed to go to the city at night or really be in the scene with other producers. It was hard for my parents to understand what I was trying to do as an artist, but it didn't stop me. They eventually saw that it wasn't a joke.
I think the press gets lazy once a certain kind of image is out there. It just adheres, rather than the press trying to break that down.
Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, 'Sure, every time.'
I'm 60, and I did 60-year-old women songs. I'm not trying to be the Hip-Hop Queen, although I am the original Hip Hop Queen.
Well, we're trying to patch and fix and put a cast on a broken system here. You can call it what you want, but we'll continue to purchase power in a private market.
Now, what we are not talking about, what you're really coming to, is what compromises one makes so that the listener understands somewhat of what you're doing, what you're trying to express.
I'm in East L.A., like Mount Washington, Highland Park. There's a little strip that they're gentrifying, trying to make a hip spot, but you go there, and it's just kind of barren. Nobody hangs out anywhere in L.A. There's no loitering in L.A., so I don't know what to do with myself.
I try to keep myself on an even keel by trying to be as critical of myself as I am of other people. I try to separate my performance from myself.
Generally I find that kids ask better questions than you get with adults. Something that kids will do a lot is, they're so nervous, and they're not really paying attention, so they'll ask the same question someone just asked. And you're trying to be nice and not embarrass them any more than they are already.
I love that, 'mommy-shaming.' When I was a new mom, I was obsessed with how I was being perceived and trying to fit in as a mom, going to mommy-and-me classes and things like that, and never quite measuring up to 'the real moms,' the 'robot moms,' as I called them.
They don't make you pay for the humor. It's up and down, but they're trying to give you as many laughs as possible in 2 minutes. They are the most honest comedians ever.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women have a chance to reach their dreams.
I had a chance to choose a couple different places and, well, I grew up - I was a small-town kid from Illinois, so No. 1, just trying to win a championship for my home state.
I'm not trying to be a celebrity, Justin Timberlake kinda guy.
Always when I directed the play, I was always trying to cast people not who were necessarily like the characters, but people who I felt had the essential component that the character had, some kind of soul for it.
We'll be going to the fish market and a farmer's market this afternoon to get what we need to make and eat dinner as a family. I'm trying to expose my kids to going to a farmers market or the fish market and learning what that's all about.
My work is more about trying to ask good questions and not trying to come up with big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that.
I'm in the process of brainstorming with my marketing team and all that stuff, trying to come up with a concept for a late-night restaurant for people in Birmingham.
Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself.
I'm trying to have my own thing, and I don't know if it's even possible. I didn't realize so many people actually think I'm trying to be like my dad. I read comments like 'She's no Elvis.' I'm not trying to be. I never set out to be.
I do not like going to the dressing room and trying on millions of outfits. I just look at something and hope that it will work. I try it on at home, since I don't like going through the whole process.
I am trying to release endorphins here. I am not preaching to you - I am trying to make you laugh.
I don't really know, I was thinking about that the other day that there aren't a lot of younger up and comers that I'm that interested in, in the comedy world. Everyone seems to be trying to play it safe.
If you're a young couple when you start out and are both working, trying to raise children, that is tough.
Our to-do lists are so full that we can't hope to complete every item on them. So what do we do? We multitask, juggling several things at once, trying to keep up by keeping busy.
