When I went back to Shea last year it really hit me how much the fans care for me, it still gives me goose bumps. I want to do the right thing for them and my family.
I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.
I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.
I think people fail to realize that teams and organizations have been stacking teams since way back in the day.
I was in a mountain biking accident and broke my sternum about three months before my unit was supposed to deploy to Iraq, and it's such a close-knit community that the idea of not getting to go is hugely jarring, so I tried to get put back in training and wound up injuring it worse.
Although I'm a retired teenager, I remember what it was like to be one. I could have sworn I was riding an emotional roller coaster most of the time. Looking back, I'm actually amazed that I survived. Barely.
Aussies are really laid back, and so are Californians.
When you look at facing retirement in your mid-30s, and all of a sudden the outlet for that passion and work ethic goes away, you can't just sit back in a rocking chair and be retired at 35. I'm not a good enough golfer to play golf every day.
I was in the Marine Corps in 1971. The idea 'Where does authority come from?' is fascinating to me. And also, the idea of a chaplain is fascinating to me because it's a man of the cloth in uniform, and it's the uniform of a killing machine. Back when I was in the Corps, when I saw that, I was amazed by it.
I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry.
Well, one of the first things is to restore the rule of law, to place the government back under the cage of law. Another thing is to stop falling for the myth of democracy.
I've got an extra-specific story about Dr. Dre. I saw him when I was 9 years old in Compton - him and Tupac. They were shooting the second 'California Love' video. My pops had seen him and ran back to the house and got me, put me on his neck, and we stood there watching Dre and Pac in a Bentley.
After my hip operation, I had to cut out butter, which I loved, and salt. I no longer eat desserts with lots of cream, and I've cut right back on alcohol.
I'm really laid back but I still like to dress up sometimes.
I've been watching 'American Idol' since its debut season in 2002. Back then, America hadn't yet evolved into a gladiatorial cybernation of bloggers, tweeters, and self-ordained voice coaches.
My school was six miles away from where I lived on the farm. I had to walk and run, there and back every day, through gorges and over rivers. If I was late, there was a very big stick waiting for me.
One moment you appear to be riding the crest of a wave, only to have the rug pulled away from you, bringing you back down to earth with a sickening thud.
I went to school in New York and grew up in and out of New York. I love it, and I miss it, and every time I go back, I think, 'Why am I in Germany?' I do know that my career is really important to me, and in Germany, they've always been so much more supportive than my previous engagements in the dance world.
But you have to give your whole life to a cello. When I realized that, I went back to the guitar and just turned the volume up a bit louder.
If I were to ask you for example right now to go back with me and define those moments in your life that shaped you as a person and you began to reexamine them, something would happen.
It rolls off my back. Ridicule doesn't mean anything - even from people you're supposed to wear knee pads around, like the scientific community.
I was the kind of kid, I'd sit in the back row of the class with my head practically under the desk. I was incredibly afraid of people and very shy.
I looked about me once again, and suddenly the dancing horses without number changed into animals of every kind and into all the fowls that are, and these fled back to the four quarters of the world from whence the horses came, and vanished.
Okay, well, I guess I'm still a kid. Because when I get really angry and fired up and I feel like my back is up against the wall, I will say vicious things.
If I just do it, it will take less time than telling someone what I'm thinking, and have them free associate, and then come back to me and I'll hate it and I'll have to redo it.
I see kids and young adults walking the streets of L.A. with this enormous sense of entitlement, who seem to think that if they are basically good people and pay their bills, then the world will be good back to them. And I think life isn't always like that.
For me, wigs and hairpieces are an everyday part of my life. One day I can wear what I like to call my 'Back to you, Barbara' look - professional and full of layers - and the next day you may see me in my 'Bubblin' Brown Sugar' look - curly, fun and bubbly.
Drama holds you back.
Taking time to sit back and watch and think about what you've seen is important. Traveling did a great deal to me. I found that when I travel and just sit in the corner and watch, a million ideas come to me.
It stinks to give up a good player. But if you think that way, you'll never make any trades. You have to focus on what you're getting back.
American food is the food of immigrants. You go back a couple of hundred years, and we were all immigrants, unless we're going to talk about Native American cuisine.
Using the right of veto would be shooting the Americans in the back.
They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
Bind up thy words that they run not riot, and grow wanton, and gather up sins for themselves in too much talking. Let them be rather confined, and held back within their own banks. An overflowing river quickly gathers mud.
The idealists dream and the dream is told, and the practical men listen and ponder and bring back the truth and apply it to human life, and progress and growth and higher human ideals come into being and so the world moves ever on.
I wore an Urban Outfitters dress on my wedding day. It was one I had in the back of my wardrobe. It was white. We went to City Hall here in New York. I wore it with blue velvet boots my husband bought for me. I loved it. It was my favorite thing. It was chilled and spontaneous.
