None of us had any idea of how successful Downton was going to be. I thought I was signing up for another period drama that had a slightly modern feel. It had a freedom about it because it was coming out of the head of Julian Fellowes. Anything could...
I don't think I've had a very interesting life, and I feel that is a great liberation. That gives me great freedom as a fiction writer. Nothing that happened holds any special tyranny over me.
Certain things happened in the early church. Women who had never had any freedom suddenly have the ability to stand up and speak and be treated as equals within the life of the church.
I learned a long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It's a strange truth, but forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It's not something that happens overnight. It's an evolution of the heart.
Failure in Afghanistan would have profound consequences for our national security. It would undermine the NATO alliance structure that has been the bedrock of Britain's defence for the last 60 years... I will not allow this to happen on my watch.
My family didn't have money, and I think it made me fearless. I'm willing to try everything and not be afraid because what's the worst that can be happen? It might not work out, but I can't be worse off than when I was a kid.
You wake up in the morning; what do you want to know? You want to know what happened overnight. You want to know if you're safe. You want to know if you're family's safe.
Especially moments when things are very difficult and complicated for me and I am still trying to grasp what is happening and I am still trying to understand and to reach family back home.
No matter what you're doing. I feel that everyone has something different that moves them or that appeals to them. Maybe something in your family or maybe something in your life that happened that really pushes you for a specific cause - as long as t...
I can watch CNN on television or the Internet to find out what happened in Hong Kong ten minutes ago. After all, it doesn't matter where something is made, we're all part of the same big family now.
I have family members who live in Africa. Because of the family that lives there, I know what is happening in these countries, and it seems so silly to me that diseases like malaria are so prevalent when they are entirely preventable. Yet children ar...
Being a conservative union member is almost like being an actor in Hollywood: You don't dare say it, or you might be injured on the job, or you might be laid off, or your family might have something happen to them.
I wasn't even going to do acting. I don't know how it even happened, to be honest. I was going to go into psychology or something like that. Or business. And then some moment of madness took over and I decided, 'Oh, I'm gonna go to London and try to ...
Nothing was planned in my career. I just went with the flow and took everything that came to me. Selling potato chips was obvious, as it was a family business. When friends suggested I should try theatre, I gave it a shot. Then I did a lot of adverti...
That's what happens in Hollywood. People are like, 'I want to hate you, because everyone else seems to love you.' But the reality is this: I'm a simple person who's not interested in attention and who just wants to go about her business.
But certainly the laser proved to be what I realized it was going to be. At that moment in my life I was too ignorant in business law to be able to do it right, and if I did it over again probably the same damn thing would happen.
I could've always worked shows, clubs, Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but I was successful in business ventures, and things weren't happening in show business, so I said, 'Let me see what I can do.'
Any business owner can tell you that if their company isn't performing profitably and up to standards, one of two things will happen: either you make changes to improve its efficiency, or a competitor will drive you out of business. Market forces hav...
I really felt like I finally made it. Having your first fake pregnancy rumor. It was really awesome. I feel like it's part of what happens in this business, but that's a real one. That's a cool one to get.
In the early days of the video game business, everybody played. The question is, what happened? My theory - and I think it's pretty well borne out - is that in the '80s, games got gory, and that lost the women. And then they got complex, and that los...
Business requires understanding financial matters, but management is different from running the financial aspects of the business - it requires understanding complex systems, how they operate, the nature of organisations, what happens when people int...
