My mom was a single mom, and she had enough on her plate. I knew when I was doing something I wasn't supposed to, and I tried to keep her from finding out about it. I did a pretty good job of that.
School was pretty good about letting me take up music and that's where I had my first musical ideas and first said, 'Yeah, I'm going to be a musician.' I just had to do a quick stop gap in the army first.
I've never, ever had people being aggressive to me in public or abusing me, and actually quite a lot of men do say to me, 'You're quite good' - though they can't bear to go, 'You're great.'
You need mystery. You actually do. I think that's what foreign women, French women in particular, are good at. There's still a sense that you need to keep some of the unknown because that's where the soul resides, or something.
If you write a good action sequence well in a novel, you're already writing it for film, because the only way to do it well is to use some of the same tricks. They're rhetorical, not visual, but it's the same move.
Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.
The worst thing you can do is try to manipulate or control perceptions. It's impossible, and when you are found out the result is disastrous. Better to be transparent and play well with others so that when bad things happen you have a reservoir of go...
When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'
I thought that it would be easier to learn that if I worked in motion pictures. So I went to work with one motion picture producer who was developing a color system. This didn't do to me much good. All I did was pick filters for the camera.
This is a time when the United States should be standing tall. There is no other leader in the world today. We shouldn't be approaching conflicts as a team sport. We either get in an we lead and we do a good job, or you don't get in at all.
I'm always trying to find something unique or a project that I can do something unique in. When the director has a vision for a piece that I've never heard before, and they can back that up with visuals and they talk a good game, I get really interes...
On the speech day, the production designer, who has a lot of say in things, and sometimes I didn't agree with him but I had to do what I was told, wanted the speech day to be all in neutral colours for the women, which was a good thing.
It's all about story and character with me, and I don't care if the job is on daytime or prime time or the web. Hey, give me a good character and someone to listen, and I'll do my acting on a street corner.
I don't know if I miss it per se, but I do miss the fact that there just doesn't seem to be any rock 'n' roll out there anyplace. Everything does seem kind of tame. It's even hard in Manhattan to go out and find a good band to go see.
I was a very good student. Procrastinating gives me anxiety, and getting a B really ticked me off. Sure, I didn't always want to do my homework, but I actually really liked school. As nerdy as it sounds, I love learning.
I've never been one to think it was cheating to sample this or to loop the drum part there - I've always done that. Even using four-track cassette recorders, I was always doing whatever I could to make it as good as I could.
I have no inhibitions about smoking or drinking, but I think too much of my voice to place it in jeopardy. I have spent many good years in training and cultivating it, and I would be foolish to do anything which might impair or ruin it.
I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.
My own way of writing is very meditated and, despite my reputation, rather slow-moving. So I do spend a good deal of time contemplating endings. The final ending is usually arrived at simply by intuition.
I was more like a middle child. My youngest brother was the baby, so he got all the attention that the baby gets. And my older brothers were getting into so much trouble that I was left in the middle, doing plays. I was up to no good, but my mother d...
It is a great thing about having young children, is that they don't really care whether you're the chief justice or whatever, and they do make sure that you have a good perspective on life and what's important.
