I didn't learn how to swing a golf club until late in my career. And even though I won all those tournaments, I still struggled with consistency, and I relied on my strengths, which were hitting the ball long and high, and I could chip and putt with ...
Most people made comments on how I was the strongest woman they knew. That was before the title wave of disaster hit my charmed life.
When I'm writing, I generally toy with an idea until it manifests itself - meaning a phrase or a tune comes into my head and eventually begins to jell. When something hits me, I write it down immediately. I don't wait, or it's gone.
I'm not one of those playwrights who says, 'Show up, hit your marks, and don't talk to me!' I always want to hear from the other artists involved, whether it's the director, the lighting tech, or the actors.
I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.
I get a kick out of watching a team defense me. A player moves two steps in one direction and I hit it two steps the other way. It goes right by his glove and I laugh.
When you've played this game for ten years and gone to bat seven-thousand times and gotten two-thousand hits do you know what that really means? It means you've gone zero for five-thousand.
If I would have ever dreamed that I wouldn't be in Van Halen anymore and was going to have resume my solo career again, I would have never contributed anything towards my own greatest hits package.
When you hit your 40s, you begin to take notice of the effects of aging because people that you know begin to die of heart attacks and tumors, so we take notice of the effects of aging.
A lot of people are living in a dream world - they want to deny that aging occurs or believe it doesn't have to occur. They'll hold on to this belief until the moment they die. The reality will eventually hit them.
When a batter swings and I see his knees move, I can tell just what his weaknesses are then I just put the ball where I know he can't hit it.
You have to teach 'em not to mess with you. You gotta be the big guy don't let him hurt you. If he hits you stand back up and beat the shit out of him.
I've got a quick mouth, and I set my boundaries. Nothing ever happened that I couldn't handle. Once when a guy came on stage making rude gestures, I hit him over the head with my guitar.
Celebs that hit the West Hollywood/Beverly Hills quadrant and places like the Urth Caffe are not exactly trying to keep a low profile; it's sort of like if LeBron James went to an ESPN Zone and then whined about being hounded for autographs.
On my first TV job I didn't have a clue. They'd tell me to hit my mark and I had no idea what they meant. You just pick it up. And ultimately, all it's really about is pretending to be someone else.
You have to have a strong idea for a hit movie, a strong core idea that resonates emotionally. It also has to technically achieve its goal - it's got to be well-written, well-paced, and interestingly told.
The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.
I'm not in a race with anybody to make the biggest hit movie anymore. I am just trying to tell stories that I can stay interested in for the two years it takes me to supervise the writing and to direct them.
Writing is a profession that has no real career structure and your best advice when you hit a difficulty is probably going to come from another writer one or two rungs on the career ladder ahead of you.
I try to do an hour of cardio on the days that I have off, and then I'll do 30 to 45 minutes on show days. That's the first thing I do when I wake up, I have breakfast and then I'll hit the gym.
I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.
