I always wanted to be a film-maker when I was younger, not an actor. I was an eight-year-old who dreamed of being a writer on 'The Simpsons,' which was a weird dream to have. But I started taking acting classes as a way to learn how to direct actors and I sort of fell in love with it.
I can tell if someone is talking to me because I'm on 'Friends' or cause they just think I'm neat. You know I don't think I've ever spent more than five or ten minutes with somebody who was ogling me because they recognized me from the show.
He who cannot eat horsemeat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horsemeat. It's simply a question of taste.
When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.
I'd rather have just one person who reads and feels my work deeply than hundreds of thousands who read it but don't really care about.
Once you get everything out of your head about what everybody else is going to think, will radio play it - and I hope they do, I really do - once you shed all of that and just be who you are, that's who I am. That's taken a lot of growing up. I've come into myself musically and as a woman, and I hope to keep growing. If you don't grow, you die.
Sitting down for the actor read when you first get together, it's like the Last Supper because you don't know who will be there for the next read.
The CD is dedicated to our dog Nell, who passed away last year.
It's much more interesting to watch someone who is ill-equipped to solve their problem fight to solve their problem than wallow in the knowledge that they're ill-equipped to solve their problems.
A man who wants time to read and write must let the grass grow long.
There's obviously a group who enjoys what Tyler Perry is putting out there. And why fault them? And there's a group that loves the things that Spike does. So they should enjoy that, too. Is it my taste? Maybe not, but I'm not going to fault anybody for doing what they're doing as long as people are showing up.
The DREAM Act was intended to benefit illegal immigrants who were brought here as children, the most sympathetic subset among our large illegal immigrant population.
I'm really attracted to girls who are passionate about music because that's what I'm obsessed with.
I don't vote for the guy I trust. I vote for the guy who trusts me the most.
I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter. There are moments I feel like 99 percent of the people who write stuff are the sweetest people, and then one crazy guy or girl spoils the whole thing.
I'd like to meet fewer people who say 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I've written,' and more 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I've written.'
And in times and places where there was not much persecution, people could become and continue Christians who neither were nor professed to be very devoted persons.
I mean, when I got to Brown, the place was riven, because you had older professors who were basically new critics and had been teaching a certain way for 30 years. And then you had this other gang who was down with the semiotic program. And as a student, you were, in a way, forced to choose which cohort you were going with.
I have an amazing social-media wing man who manages my Facebook fan site. All my blogs get copied there.
My favorite actor who played villains - who could play anything, really - was Jimmy Cagney.
One good thing about television is that you have a lot of people with money who have real good cameras going around to all these countries. You haven't been there? Great. Turn on The History Channel or The Discovery Channel. So, we're lucky in that way.
But ours was intended to be a citizen government. It is what of, by and for the people means. And when our most important issue in California is the creation of jobs, I think it's quite helpful to have someone in the U.S. Senate or in the governor's seat who actually knows where jobs come from.
My family was going back to England to visit my mother's grandmother, who was very ill. We went up to Liverpool and I met my great-aunt, who was just a force of nature. She was an elocution teacher and a huge enthusiast for theater and the classics. I took her amateur acting class, and she was really impressed with me.
In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government.
There are some lawyers who think of themselves as basically instruments of whoever their clients are, and they pride themselves on their professional craft.
The most important thing is that you hire people who complement you and are better than you in specific areas. Good people hire people better than themselves. So A players hire A+ players.
You see so many movies... the younger people who are coming from MTV or who are coming from commercials and there's no sense of film grammar. There's no real sense of how to tell a story visually. It's just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, you know, which is pretty easy.
Even if there are a lot women in films, there are few who are lesbians, that people know about.
Researches tested a new form of medical marijuana that treats pain but doesn't get the user high, prompting patients who need medical marijuana to declare, 'Thank you?'
Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
For me, what I really want to come out of it is to show people that I can hold together a movie, be the number one character and play someone who is twenty or twenty-one.
I do think of myself as a bit of a loner, a bit of an independent. I'm one of those people who, when they're sick, like to curl up and remove myself. I don't like a lot of people around. There is nothing you can do to help.
When I'm performing for the people, I am me, then. I am that little girl who, when she was five years old, used to sing at church. Or I'm that 15-year-old young lady who wanted to be grown and wanted to sing and couldn't wait to be smokin' a cigarette, you know?
None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
