I don't think that the Pulitzer should be given the way it is. I think the competition should be anonymous. I think completely different people would win it if the names were taken off because a lot of it is done on relationships and names.
I was on the verge of taking over a company myself, from my father, before I left Knoxville to become an actor. I was also a company commander in Korea, so I had some sense of how powerful authority can be. How dangerous it can be.
It's like a novelist writing far out things. If it makes a point and makes sense, then people like to read that. But if it's off in left field and goes over the edge, you lose it. The same with musical talent, I think.
You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.
I don't feel I'm fighting to reach this huge audience; it just happens. I go on stage before the audience arrives and look out to this vast empty house. There's something therapeutic about taking in the ring where you'll perform.
Well, unless you've suffered from panic attacks and social anxiety disorders, which is what I was diagnosed as having, it's hard to explain it. But you go on stage knowing you're actually physically going to die. You will keel over and die.
A lot of people think that there has to be extreme continuity in an album, but if you look at my background, it's variety! I want to see some variety in an artist, I want to be entertained, I want some depth. Show me some different styles!
When there's an accident, we all have to slow down and watch the accident. We all have to be a little voyeuristic. I mean, look at the world we live in now, with all these 'Big Brother' shows. We're all a bunch of voyeuristic people.
I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn't want them either, so it worked out well.
A lot of people have said I'd have probably done better in my career if I hadn't looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn't be blamed because you want to look pretty.
I used to always sit in church looking out the windows at the boys, wondering if I could make an excuse to go out and, you know, go to the bathroom because all the outdoor toilets. But anyhow, I was only going out to see the boys.
Obviously, I've been very lucky in general in my career, but I feel that I've been very lucky in terms of having directors come along at the right times who have taken me to the next level of where I needed to be.
All of the awards, applause, Twitter followers, shoes, it will all go away eventually. But if I can leave the world slightly more hopeful, inspired, and more healed than when I arrived, I did my job.
I grew up moving around. I went to seven different schools, so I know what it's like to be that new girl and have to not only know who you are but also take that into foreign circumstances and know how to respond.
I was looking at making a shift in my career. I've been so blessed I'd like to be able to give that back. If I could find young artists, young performers I can nurture to have a career I would really like that.
I like the feeling of not knowing where to look when you are only performing for one person or watching someone practice. It creates this kind of a strange in-between, which can be mirrored in the feeling of making a painting.
If you're going to reach for it, reach all the way for it. Albums like 'Purple Rain' and 'Thriller' and those kind of records, you had to reach far above the din of cynicism and modern living to get to that place, against all the odds.
If you have never been tortured, or locked up and verbally threatened, you may find it hard to believe that anyone would confess to something he had not done. Intuition holds that the innocent do not make false confessions.
At only 20 years old I got married. I was still a kid myself, but in those times, if you got someone pregnant, you had no choice but to get married. So I left school and the only thing I could do was sing.
Well, I'll say I have an incredible ability to fantasize - I really do. I don't have to have things tangible to be able to see them, and therefore I enjoy so many things, because they're in my mind.
A maverick feels like he has no choice however difficult his choice of expression. In my case, it was going backwards into tonality. It seemed so wrong. The idea that progress is going into the past in a new way is very strange, even though there are...
