I have a curious background for someone who turns out to be a writer.
I was very fortunate to grow up with parents who love to travel, so I traveled from a young age. My dad's a heart surgeon and goes to conferences all over the world. By the time I was seven, I traveled outside the country for the first time. We went to Paris. The next year, we went to London, and then Brussels.
What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I'm someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.
I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.
The familiar mood that awaits the sensitive young who are poor and dispossessed is a mood of sharp and painful inferiority, of violently angry tensions, of desperate and overwhelming longings.
There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infancy of those born in the first years of colonial life in this strange new world.
When I was growing up I loved reading historical fiction, but too often it was about males; or, if it was about females, they were girls who were going to grow up to be famous like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton, or Harriet Tubman. No one ever wrote about plain, normal, everyday girls.
I don't think people who have children are acting selfishly or unselfishly. Having a child who'll be loved, to parents who love each other, is the important thing.
The people who are teaching religion and not teaching love are missing the message.
I wanted to be a man who travelled the world to make peace. I didn't realise that most diplomats are megaphones for their governments.
I was the girl who did everybody's homework, but I was also, like, student council president and yearbook editor and, like, all-around overachiever. Like, I'm disabled, but I can do anything.
I'm not a model, I'm an artist. In one of my videos, I'm doing this shot of me with no make-up on where I've just woken up, and I don't think a lot of people would be comfortable enough to do that. But that's the way I look. This is who I am. Let's enjoy it. Let's just live life to the full while we're all here.
I get a lot of people that say, 'You know what, I heard that you're a painter, and I thought, 'Oh, another model who is saying she's an artist.' They assumed it was going to be a few splashes on a canvas.
Music is my main goal, but I'm not going to rush a record out. There are so many actors who have come out with albums these days. I don't want to do it because it's the thing to do. I want to wait until the time is right.
It is by now beyond question that Elton John is a competent and classy entertainer. Few people who have achieved his popularity have succeeded in maintaining his standards for performance and professionalism.
I can't imagine anybody who ends up being an artist who didn't pass through a time of geekiness.
I've always been a family man and count myself as one of those who are lucky to have the comfort of a family.
I have so many questions about love. How do you win at it? Especially if you're in a relationship with an impossible person? What if you believe in someone who's completely untrustworthy, who at their core can't even believe in themselves?
Two famous happy warriors - Reagan and his political soulmate, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - knew they were fighting their own ideological and external wars. But they did so with the sunny dispositions and positive outlooks of those who knew they were on the right side of history.
Who else is putting seven figures down for unreleased rap tracks?
I could not see myself going back into the studio without Tommy Dowd, our beloved producer who passed away in 2002. Then in 2009, Michael Lehman, my manager, really pushed me to meet with T Bone Burnett. I ended up meeting with T Bone in Memphis, and we hit it off right away; I knew he was a guy I could work with.
I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I'd like to use my time more carefully.
I watched 'Iron Man 3' the other night, and my chin was on the floor. 'Vikingdom' is a different type of movie, because it's rooted in reality. The characters are more real; they're not these superhuman people who can fly and do things.
I know a lot of people who are not here anymore, and I wonder why I'm still here... Not a day goes by that I don't think about Sam Cooke. His presence is so strong and so convincing to me, a true artist, a true talent, who never talked down to people.
It's the big question of every TV show, right, where you have these two people who it's clear the world wants to put them together and everyone wants to see them together, but also when you're telling these stories you can't throw these people together immediately.
Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here.
Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.
Those of us who were 12 or 13 when the war started were absolutely thrown into the mainstream. We had to grow up instantly and take care of ourselves.
The Trail of Tears should teach all of us the importance of respect for others who are different from ourselves and compassion for those who have difficulties.
Politics are private. I don't understand people who try to convince you to join one party or another.
I believe that as women, we must commit ourselves to sustaining the progress made by our foremothers who fought so hard for women's equality and liberation.
Somebody ripped their pants open at my wedding, dipping my mother. My mother is not a lady who throws herself into a dip that often, so I don't think he thought she was really going to do it.
Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.
The demonization of people who don't have a voice is particularly despicable, and the only thing we can do in our own little way is hold a mirror up to society and kind of say we're better than that.
People are proud to be from Baltimore. In any industry you work in, you need support to survive. And this city has that support for anyone who was born here or lived here. And it also gives you the feeling, 'Oh, I stand for this place. And if I do something I'm not proud of, I might not make my town proud.' And I want to make Baltimore proud.
The main thing I look for in a recipe is taste, which is different from caterers and restaurants, who first ask 'How does it look?'
