I went to see 'Phantom of the Opera' with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music... Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time - the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.
I get by with a little help from my friends.
When you are at the bottom, you find beauty in such little things, and goodness in such little gestures. When I compare any struggle today to ones that I may have had in my childhood, there is nothing that can bring me down.
I grew up as a step-kid, always a little outside, always trying hard to follow and fit in. But over time, I've come to feel that my tendency toward self-erasure is a deep and real part of me. I think I'd be this way no matter how I grew up.
Do mainstream crowds want to watch a movie about good things happening in black neighborhoods? Do black audiences want to see a little girl doing something in a white world?
There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature.
I just start writing, and in the process, one hopefully comes up with ideas and solutions and explores all the little nooks and crannies.
I watch a ton of movies. Going way back, I like 'The Godfather.' 'The Matrix' was one of my favorites - the first one; they got a little carried away after the first one. Those are two that stand out.
I love those kids on 'The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.' I remember when they were little they looked like they were having so much fun just being kids. And that's how I was growing up and how I try to be.
I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.
If I had all the filmmakers that traumatized me when I was a little kid in this room, all I would say is, 'Thank you,' because they've made me who I am. As much as I say 'trauma,' it all comes from a place of love. The fact that I am feeling emotions at all based on a work is a wonderful thing, so I'm happy to be a part of that discussion.
I think on some level, you do your best things when you're a little off-balance, a little scared. You've got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.
I'd rather be a big fish in a specialized pond than a little, little fish in a more generalized big pond.
But when I was seven or eight, I did my first little piece of acting.
I think the Beatles is one band that, if I'm working on a song arrangement or if I have some idea for a song, and there's a little bit of a Beatles quality to it, I never avoid that. I always will steer into it.
When you have little girls bringing you your action figures for you to sign, it's like, 'Wow, things are happening, and dreams do come true.'
I was eccentric, even as a kid. I was an early reader, an early talker. I was very curious in a way that maybe the other kids weren't. I was a little more outgoing.
I think Americans appreciate that my dad's a genuine guy. He's not gonna manicure every little word, and he's not massaging it. He's not running computer analytics to tell you what you want to hear and then do whatever the special interests tell him what they want him to do in the end.
There's nothing I like better than going to my apartment, closing the door, cooking my little dinner for one and just tuning out. My apartment really is my haven. It's a nest where I go to heal.
There are a lot of action movies with very little comedy.
Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.
My job requires me to put on a little dress and run around the streets of New York in heels. But I also had the financial means to hire a yoga teacher to come to my house while my sitter watched the newborn. For 95 percent of the world, that's not realistic.
I do feel like I have a direct connection with God for some reason; always have since I was a little kid - I would talk to God, talk to the sky.
I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature.
As for Aliki - if you were to stand in the middle of Rome and say the name Sophia Loren, or Paris and say the name Catherine Deneuve or Brigitte Bardot, or L.A. and the name Marilyn Monroe, it's like standing in Athens, or anywhere in wide-flung Greece, and saying Aliki Vougiouklaki. A huge star - and so little known elsewhere in the world.
A lot of times people feel a little apprehensive about suggesting to actually meet in person. One of the reasons that can be hard is people think they have to propose something super novel.
In France, we don't yet have the craft that American TV does or big studios like Paramount. It was so cool going through those famous gates when you have your own little pass and picture on it. Woo hoo, I'm going to work!
My mother always cultivated my imagination from the time I was very little.
I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine.
In terms of productivity - that is, how much a worker produces in an hour - there's little difference between the U.S., France, and Germany. But since more people work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create more wealth.
My mom was a little weepy. My dad was very logical about it. Once they realized you can't change, they wanted to know that you can be happy and be gay. Once they realized that, they were very cool about it.
Playing with Tom Watson, I grew up a little bit. Even if he didn't say something to you, even if he didn't give you advice, you have grown up just watching him. It was great.
We will not have humanoid androids. It's interesting: when you start trying to make robots look more human, you end up making them look more grotesque. It takes very little to go from super-attractive robot to hideous robot.
I don't like to have a calm, orderly, quiet place to work. I often compose while driving, compose in my head. It is true that I wrote my little book, 'The Sounds of Poetry, A Brief Guide,' almost entirely in airplanes and airport departure lounges.
Even at 10 or 12, I was a hot, fast little cheerleader.
For a long time our son was a little boy with autism, which was a certain kind of challenge. Now that he's a teenager with autism - and a teenager who notices girls - we're faced with something else altogether.
