I feel like I'm calmer, I'm kinder, I'm more patient the more I do my own meditation.
In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.
We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.
In my own work, I tend to cover a lot of time and to jump back and forward in time, and sometimes the way I do this is not very straightforward.
I was embarrassingly well-versed in Marvel lore, so it was pretty easy to slip into that world. But really, already, by the time I'd started writing superhero comics, my dream was really to be writing my own characters.
Of course, when I started my career, like anyone else who was 16 at the time, we were besotted by the rock-n-roll scene from America, and all I was interested in was having a career of my own.
Retaining a sense of control is really important. I like to do things in my own time, and in my own style, so an office with targets and bureaucracy just wouldn't work.
I don't work with a stylist, I don't work with a glam squad to get me together for the red carpet, I really enjoy the time it takes to do it myself, to choose my clothes and do my own makeup and my own hair.
In school, I had a tough time fitting in, and dancing was my way of being in my own element. As a teenager, I became a bit disillusioned with it. Even with competitions, I'd win, but still there would be tears.
From the time I was 16 and I had my own checking account, you'd think most young women would run out and buy clothes. No, I ran out and got myself a psychiatrist!
I was very, very little - it was the first time I ever cooked on my own, with my mother's supervision - and I made scrambled eggs. I felt so accomplished, like magic!
I suppose if I had my time again I would refuse it and stay at Fulham because I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and secondly I would have taken it on my own terms.
My process is to be by myself when I record. It's quite an emotional performance to pull off when someone else is in the room. I prefer to go away and have my own time with it, bring it in later.
Being called ugly and fat and disgusting to look at from the time I could barely understand what the words meant has scarred me so deep inside that I have learned to hunt, stalk, claim, own and defend my own loveliness.
I won't work on anyone's else's script. I won't write for anyone else. I write my own stuff and make that when the time is right.
It became a question of do I want to be on a label where it could take three years to put out a record instead of putting out three records over the same period of time on my own.
With more time I like to see the actors find something of their own places, so I can get their own ideas before I put mine in. Given they have a better idea more often enough.
Of course I like to watch myself bat. After every innings, match, series, I do watch my own videos whenever I get the time.
My own career started in New York at the 'Associated Press', a fast-paced news agency where we rarely had time for deep reporting.
I didn't want to be the typical teen idol. I didn't want to be Leif Garrett. I didn't want to be Shaun Cassidy, David Cassidy or Parker Stevenson. I wanted to do my own thing.
It's all a sham: I have seen, and I know firsthand, indeed from my own pen, how the organized Right has sabotaged not only journalism but also democracy and truth.
