Your parents are always a big influence on you. They help you make you who you are. The main thing my parents taught me is just to be a nice person - to be generous, kind and happy. I hope it comes off when I work and meet people.
I go to the Natural History Museum and look at the cage of stuffed starlings there. But my favourite thing is the big blue whale. The scale of it is unbelievable, and makes you feel how insignificant you are as a human being.
It always depresses me when people moan about how commercial Christmas is. I love everything about it. The tradition of having this great big feast, slap bang in the middle of winter, is an essential thing to look forward to at the end of the year.
Since I was a child, death is definitely something that I think about every day. But I think that everybody does. You try and avoid it, but it's such a big thing that you can't.
There is an analogy between conservation and education reform. The coalition around education reform is the biggest bipartisan thing going in this state right now. We need to recapture the big bipartisan spirit for conservation.
My parents always knew that I wanted to act, so it didn't really come as a big surprise. The only thing they told me was that I had to wait until I was 18 so I could get my education out of the way first.
The planet's biggest problems have to do with sustainability, environmental decline, global poverty, disease, conflict and so forth. Really, they're all interconnected - it's one big problem, which is that the way we're doing things can't go on.
I don't want to be a great executive without being a great mum and a great wife. I don't want to look back and say I wish I had done things differently. 'Balance' is a really big word for me.
The thing is, horror is a big part of 'Sherlock Holmes.' Doyle also wrote a lot of great horror stories, so there's a lot more horror in 'Holmes' that people possibly think of. There's a lot of curses and mysticism and real scares.
Maybe it will be a great thing when the Baby Boomers finally die out. In real life, it's not a matter of the good guys or the bad guys. Rather, it's big numbers and small numbers that do the counting.
One thing I think celebrities shy away from is exposing the reality that we're all the same. Somebody's not more important because they have a Bentley or a big house or a famous boyfriend or plastic surgery - we're all the same.
The big thing that everyone forgets, you're famous and on TV and everything, but I think there's something very rewarding to be able to write a song, record it, and have it turn out as you heard it in your head, or even better.
I want to be a little more dramatic nowadays. I definitely want something big and funny, but I look for things that can just have people see me in a different light and let me mature as both an entertainer and an actor and a comedian.
As a beat reporter covering the CIA and intelligence world after the terrorist attacks of 2001, I could sense that many things I couldn't see or understand were changing, expanding, getting so big they were difficult to manage.
The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.
I went into college undeclared. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew that music was obviously this central big important thing in my life that I was gonna keep doing.
A trip to space is a big motivator to give up some things in your personal life. Obviously, you can't give up everything and you don't want to.
All women, and men of color - we were owned like tables and chairs. We spent a hundred years getting a legal identity as human beings. That's a big thing.
I have this thing for British women. I love Judi Dench. I love Helen Mirren. I love these women, and I definitely do have big girl crushes on them.
Just like breathing and eating, having gratitude for your big and small blessings is another thing that you should never live your life without.
We had to understand things like why the top quark was so heavy and the electron is so light. The Higgs is a big, important step.
