I always look to play flawed characters. I'm not very interested in playing somebody that's just, you know, the very nice one or the attractive one, or whatever, which a lot of female parts can just be written that way.
Even talking, I'm super-loud. I could never have that kind of meek, little wispy whimsical lavender and lace voice. It comes from my body. There's no way I can fight it.
The freedom of the press works in such a way that there is not much freedom from it.
We need to lift up the nation so we can find a more civil way to deal with our disagreements because, in these United States of America, no one should ever feel their life threatened over their political beliefs and positions.
Work creates an enormous sense of self and I saw that in my mother. She was an enormous, towering figure to me in the best possible way. I picked up a lot of things from her in the way that I work... I also picked up a lot of the failings of when your father doesn't have those things and that results in a house that turns into a minefield.
Prior to Magellan, due to the fact that we knew it was so hot on Venus, we thought that the rocks at the surface would behave more plastically, more like Silly Putty than like solid rock in the way that we think of it, like the rocks that I'm sitting on.
I didn't want my records to sound like anybody else, and when I've got my guys in the studio, I have a language with those guys because we work together every day. A lot of times, you bring in outside guys, studio players, whatever, and they're great musicians. It's just that they don't necessarily play the way I want it to be played.
For me, poetry was... the fastest way to express what I was feeling, what I was going through.
One trap you can fall into when playing someone iconic is to end up doing everything in an iconic way, no matter how pedestrian or mundane that thing is.
For me, it is always part of my holiday to go and work my way along the shelf in the local artisan bakery with its breads, savoury tartlets, pastries and cakes. It is soul food: one of those things that tells you about a place and the history of a place and its people.
The way I see it, I can either cross the street, or I can keep waiting for another few years of green lights to go by.
I think my favorite artists are honest artists, and as a songwriter, that's what you have to do. You have to be willing to put yourself out there in a really vulnerable way.
You think your life is going one way and then suddenly, you're on another track.
Goethe died in 1832. As you know, Goethe was very active in science. In fact, he did some very good scientific work in plant morphology and mineralogy. But he was quite bitter at the way in which many scientists refused to grant him a hearing because he was a poet and therefore, they felt, he couldn't be serious.
I shy away from plot structure that depends on the characters behaving in ways that are going to eventually be explained by their childhood, or by some recent trauma or event. People are incredibly complicated. Who knows why they are the way they are?
Schiaparelli symbolizes the capacity to think and create in a different way.
We're the roughest people in the way we play and live, and that is because Americans come from people who all got up one morning and went 5,000 miles, and that was a time in the 19th century when it wasn't so easy to do.
As soon as I saw tattoos as a way to tell your story, I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I totally get it.' So I got my first tattoo a couple of years ago, and it's the word 'hope' on my left arm. It has a couple of dots at the end for each of my kids.
In Orlando, I handled a lot of stuff the wrong way.
The best way to use the gold of the Redeemer is for the redemption of those in peril.
To realize President Obama's vision of opportunity for all, it's all about making the right match. The way we do that is through job-driven training - connecting ready-to-work Americans with ready to be-filled jobs. It helps more people secure a foothold in the middle class and helps businesses to profit and grow.
I never believed I could write anything. No way - write a whole story? Figuring out all that plotting and symbolism? How do you foreshadow things?
I have never believed in the fallacy that the federal government can buy its way out of economic troubles through needless spending. For that reason, I am proud to oppose 'stimulus' packages and endless corporate bailouts, which will do little but weaken the long-term integrity of the American economy.
The problem is that I work in more than one genre. It's impossible for me to aim for a single one because, for me, comedy is mixed with tragedy. That's very Spanish, the way in which comedy and tragedy are inextricable from each other.
I believe the U.S. has been way too silent on the brutality, the lack of human rights in the Muslim world for women.
We first started to rent old VFW halls in Philly or whatever; we rented kegs and did parties and played our own music. We had to find a way to do it because nobody else was helping us, and I think now it's important to keep those dialogues happening, those parties happening.
I found I am not an anarchistic form creator; I'm intuitive, and I'm trying to figure out a way to explore human fragility.
I was an only child with a lot of time to kill. I suspect a lot of writers are only children, or only children become writers because it's a way of being alone.
I've definitely had my fair share at shaking my fists at the gods of Hollywood, but I'm learning that I cannot think that way or I will go crazy.
If we can come up with a way of backing up my brain into another that I have in my back-pack, we'll do it. People talk themselves out of things very easily. Things that they think are a million years away, or never, are actually four years away.
Whilst worthy in themselves, applications shouldn't be the only way to drive basic research.
I think in order to push kids and coach kids the way we want to coach them, we've got to have their trust.
I have trouble with modern art. But in general, all art forms fascinate me - art is the way human beings express what we can't say in words.
People thought the storyline and characters for 'X-Files' made it a 'dark' show, but I never saw it that way. I always thought Mulder and Scully were the light in dark places.
In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.
My inbox is now bulging with touching emails from young women scientists who have been kind enough to write and thank me for inspiring them and helping them on their way. It has also been of great comfort to me to see many women at the top of science testifying for my record in supporting women scientists.
