I remember my choir teacher in high school told me, 'When in doubt, sing loud.' I'm a terrible singer, but I always auditioned for the musicals, and would get cast in them because I really would just put it all out there. That was really good advice,...
I usually doze off between 7:30 and 9 p.m. while putting my baby to sleep. Then I suddenly wake up remembering I'm an adult with no bedtime. I spend the next four hours catching up on reading, e-mails, and other adult pursuits until I collapse for go...
I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imagin...
I was very small, about 3 or 4 I think, and just wanted to be the people on telly telling these wonderful stories. Obviously the idea grew and matured with me but I can't ever remember wanting to do anything else. I've just sort of taken it for grant...
I remember times when I was at shows and the person onstage locked eyes with me. And in that moment, everything was right with the world. I think that's part of my job, to create these thousands of moments every night. And for the rest of their life,...
One day, I was playing 'The Game of Life,' the board game, with a mess of kids, and I wasn't quite sure how, but it seemed different than the game I remembered playing as a kid. So I bought an old game, from 1960, and it was different.
There's a window in my life which is football. I try to remember that it's not going to be there forever. That's why staying humble is important; knowing who I am and the message I'm sending out. I always try to be a person first, before I'm No. 55 o...
In fifth grade, we had to write a story and read it in front of the class. When I read mine out, the class were just belly laughing. And I remember being like, 'This is the coolest!' So I want to dedicate my life to trying to make people laugh. I can...
I can only say the first thing that pops into my mind is I remember, years ago, seeing kind of a has-been country singer working - when I first moved to Nashville - in a bar in a Holiday Inn.
I'm always like, 'I can't believe I sound like my mother.' I remember running out of the house telling, 'Put your shoes on or you're going to get sick!' That's an old wives' tale, but it's like some weird mind control that I would be like that.
At first I read mostly books by Southern authors - black and white - because almost all the people I knew were born and raised in the South, starting with my mother. I remember I got a lot of Erskine Caldwell.
I was in a band in Auckland, and I remember they all hated me. They had a big intervention. They said, basically, 'Gin, we think you suck.' I was miserable. I cried and cried. But looking back, that taught me about social skills and how to communicat...
It bothers me that I won't live to see the end of the century, because, when I was young, in St. Louis, I remember saying to Marilyn, my sister by adoption, that that was how long I wanted to live: seventy years.
There is pressure that comes with everything being a big deal. I remember thinking, 'I need to survive the Shins. I don't know what I'm going to do to make a living otherwise, but I really don't want to do the Shins right now.'
The HoLee model was the first term structure model. I remember reading their paper soon after it was published and as it was fairly different from many of the other papers that I had read, I had to read it quite a few times. I realized that it was a ...
When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time... Of course it's not remotely like seeing a baby for the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I th...
I remember when I first met Jason Reitman with the 'Whiplash' script; he quickly became a mentor figure who guided me through the process and also protected me and made sure that when it came time to actually make 'Whiplash,' I was able to make exact...
I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as an adult, but I don't remember a time when I didn't have them. Back in the 1960s, when I was growing up, my symptoms didn't have a nam...
I remember the first time my friend Colin Lewis, who used to be a judge with me on a show on MuchMusic called 'disBAND,' told me, 'I think I just found your next favorite artist to adore.' He sent me The Weeknd, and he was completely spot on. The Wee...
Looking back on high school, I just remember specific scenarios and thinking, wow, that was such a big deal at the time, but right now it feels like it never even happened. So I guess if I can give any advice, I would just say that everything will pa...
I don't remember ever deciding to become a performer. I just always was. I began performing by mimicking the performers on the new television that first took the attention away from me as the baby of the household. I continued performing to put a smi...
