I became a script writer with absolutely no idea of how to write a script whatsoever. I still feel a bit of an outsider in that regard. If I can maintain that approach to screenwriting, it can continue to be enjoyable.
I never remember having a plan. All I could think about was how I was going to afford to get into college or where I was going to stay because I hated being at home. I didn't really have time to think about anything in the future. I didn't think about a career or anything. I went to uni, got a couple of jobs, so I sort of funded it myself.
I try to be careful how much I sing about the suburban house or whatever.
I often joke that I've just become a professional schmoozer. Like, nobody cares how well I can rock climb anymore. It just has to do with how well I can schmooze.
I'm attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.
I first learned how to do hair from drag queens. I learned eyelashes are the key to life, because they make everyone look fabulous.
He has missed the finest lesson of culture and experience who has not learned how to enjoy without owning.
Coming in, I had no idea basketball would be a career for me, but I grew 7 inches in college and was fortunate to have a great career in the NBA. The experience taught me about service, what our great country was built on, the sacrifices people have made, how to work together and trust the people around you to accomplish a great goal.
So if you want to know how Exxon Mobil can make $10 billion profit in 90 days, just look around. The whole world was built for them.
How full of trifles everything is! It is only one's thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.
Whatever you think about me, I was pretty open about how I felt about people.
I hate to say 'chain restaurant,' but we're sort of a corporation now. How do we defy that concept, where people assume each restaurant can't be good?
I did get to hang out with my dad for a little while. I went with him to summer stock. I watched him be a real king of the world. He'd ship out as a star in summer stock. He sometimes directed the shows. I learned a lot from him - not just about acting, but about everything, how to handle a woman.
I didn't even have that many close LGBT friends or anything like that, but I suppose it was growing up and becoming aware of how you are in a cultural landscape that is blatantly homophobic... you turn around and say, 'Why did I grow up in a homophobic place? Why did I grow up in a misogynistic place?'
One thing that I had to remember in my personal journey in the music industry and coming up in the music industry was how many times I was told no. I was signed, I was dropped, I was signed, and I was put on a shelf.
As a viewer of TV shows, I always like shows more when I just feel like the people in charge have a plan. You can just tell sometimes, 'Oh, there's a plan there. They have an idea for how this is going to unfold.'
Every time you write anything, at least half your readers are going to disagree with you. A big part of sports writing is how you respond to that tension.
No one forgets the presence of the camera, no matter how long it's there.
The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.
I travel a lot, so when I arrive in a city, I like to go to good local bookshops and make a selection based on how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. The book I pick usually seems to have a definite karmic connection!
Any time I was at Trader Joes, and the person bagging my stuff would be like, 'Did I go to college with you? How do I know you?' Then it took awhile, and suddenly people were like, 'Oh, you are the girl from 'United States of Tara.'
I watched a million coming-out videos, and that was kind of how I accepted it myself.
I haven't the faintest idea what my royalties are. I haven't the faintest idea how many copies of books sold, or how many books that I've written. I could look these things up; I have no interest in them. I don't know how much money I have. There are a lot of things I just don't care about.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year because it reminds us to give thanks and to count our blessings. Suddenly, so many things become so little when we realize how blessed and lucky we are.
Over time, we amass limiting beliefs about how life supposedly is - beliefs that are not valid. Then we allow these limiting beliefs to stop us from fully living our happiest lives.
No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.
I'll always remember when I bumped into Good Morning America's Robin Roberts on a flight to my mother's funeral in 1994, and how kind she was during that difficult time.
The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.
I love how our industry always stands united.
You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say.
I measured my success by how many clients I had and how many billable hours I had.
I don't know how it could be more stark or clear: this entire society is being dominated by corporate power in a way that may exceed what happened in the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century.
Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I'm not sure we do.
Kiss me and you will see how important I am.
Making a film is like making a mixtape. You're collecting all this stuff and putting your favorite stuff into it: you have actors that you like, characters that you're interested in, moments you want to explore, themes you want to deal with, music that you want to put in. It's a pastiche of all these things that deal with how you see the world.
As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.
