My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.
I was born and raised in East Los Angeles by a single mom who had three biological kids and adopted four more. I never met my dad.
I believe that human beings are born first and given passports later. I'm really thankful for my journey. And it's a journey I didn't design.
I think Madonna has a great deal of intelligence and capability. I have a lot of respect for her. She's taken her career and maximized it with intelligence and creativity.
The truth is, after Boys Don't Cry, I realized how few and far between the great roles are. I am beyond thankful for finding Million Dollar Baby.
Especially in the world of fantasy and superheroes, it's great to have role models that aren't in skimpy little outfits, in impossible poses. That's so important for young women.
I am thankful that geniuses and artists and good people, no matter how hard it is, will eventually be recognized. I am doubly thankful that also goes for idiots.
With land-roaming animals, I've just read so much about the sophistication of their emotional lives and their intelligence and the way they process information that betrays a greater intelligence.
People have an image of Italians. When I go somewhere in the world, I don't care where it is, when they look at me it's not about my intelligence. It's who can I beat up.
In Europe they call geeks 'smart people,' and frankly I think we live in a culture that doesn't value intelligence enough; so I am very proud in saying that I am a geek.
If I could have been a marine biologist I would have, but I didn't have that kind of intelligence. Numbers were never my strong point.
I did my military service from 1989 - 92 and I was never shot at or had to fire on anybody. I was very lucky. I was more involved in intelligence and counter-intelligence.
I can't see what's wrong about assuming intelligence in your audience and what's bad news about being rewarded for assuming that.
As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.
Women are far and away the bigger consumers of fiction than men, but men are still far and away the more reviewed, the more critically esteemed, the more respected. That can get frustrating.
Male critics and men in the publishing industry want from their women writers what they want from their wives. I'm interested in presenting characters that are more challenging, threatening, complicated and unpredictable.
Every one of our greatest national treasures, our liberty, enterprise, vitality, wealth, military power, global authority, flow from a surprising source: our ability to give thanks.
To recommend that women become identical to men, would be simple reversal, and would defeat the whole point of androgyny, and for that matter, feminism: in both, the whole point is choice.
My mom was sarcastic about men. She would tell me Adam was the rough draft and Eve was the final product. She was a feminist minister, an earth mom who wore a bra only on Sundays.
Men's need to dominate women may be based in their own sense of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men are making no effort to discover it.
A lot of people like cabinet making; people are intrigued by it. Women in particular like cabinet making. They like it more than men do - the men are not really interested in the cabinet making.
