I had a few pimples here and there when I was 14. Never had braces though, thank God. A girl in my class had, like, the big helmet of head gear. I felt so bad for her. People always made fun of me enough because of my name.
If I should say anything that is not in conformity with what is held by the Holy Roman Catholic Church, it will be through ignorance and not through malice. This may be taken as certain, and also that, through God's goodness, I am, and shall always b...
Israel knew that there was no greater gift than to be given God's name, but that gift was a frightening reality that threatened to consume her. Israel, who would be tempted by the idolatrous presumption she possessed God's name, rightly never forgot ...
My Gram said that I would get the role in whichever show God thought was right but it wouldn't hurt to express a preference. I told her that I would like to do 'The Brady Bunch' because I'd have five other kids on the set to play with. God was listen...
I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and sh...
My younger sister had kids before I did, and managed to earn a master's degree while raising them as a single parent. Now she's a brilliant second-grade teacher. I'm in awe of her ability to juggle everything and still be a great mother.
I really want to be like my mom in some ways, because I already take a lot after her already. I really like the way she treats us and disciplines us, and I think that she's just great because of how she's balanced us and all of that.
I love babies, and I have my nephews that I love. I have a great mom and she has raised three kids, so if I take lessons from her, I think I'll be great. All my friends have little brothers or sisters.
I thought, 'OK, Melissa Gilbert is playing my mom, and I'm playing her old role - no pressure.' So I went up to Melissa and said, 'It's such an honor playing your daughter,' and she smiled and said, 'Oh, shut up.' I thought, 'Great, a normal person.'
I love Salma Hayek; we've been friends for a really long time. I admire how she has come such a long way and always remained grounded and who she is. She never compromises to follow her vision, and she is loyal. Such qualities only mark the great sta...
I come to writing from hearing great stories as a child in Louisiana, where the mark of a person was his or her ability to be a raconteur. I also come to writing as a professional actress whose body has been trained to listen and smell and inhabit ch...
I want the little lassies who are thinking of going to a nightclub in Cardiff to stop to see what that guy's screaming for, or Grandma to put her knitting down to see why that guy's chatting about Alexander the Great. I'm after pulling in, whether it...
I guess something people wouldn't expect me to listen to are artists like Alicia Keys. But she is so incredibly talented. She has this huge voice and great work ethic, which I really respect in an artist. She is also very humble and gracious and devo...
I'm not formal and I'm impatient. So I think my team would say that when she starts tapping her pen and the leg starts moving quickly, that it's time to move on. I'm not good at long, drawn-out kinds of sessions.
If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.
One professor in college told me flat out I wasn't good enough to enter the creative writing program. I saved that letter and promised myself I would send it back to her when my first book came out.
I never wanted for anything. We went to Ireland for holidays every year. I was 14 when we first went to Italy. My mum was determined I was going to go to a good school. My mum was an absolute grafter. A real grafter. I got my work ethic from her.
If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of...
I am really into how words sound out loud, so I was always the kid who would, like, read the page of the book to herself in her room over and over and over. And Raymond Carver is great for that. Tobias Wolff is an author who is really good for that a...
My grandparents never understood why my mother Noreen chose such exotic names for her children: Damon and me. My granny insisted on calling my brother Dermot - a good Irish name - until she died; I was just known as 'wee one.'
I never read my reviews... not even the good ones. Barbra Streisand once told me, if just one person in the audience doesn't applaud, it bothers her. I'm the same way. I'd be devastated to read that someone didn't like my work.
