I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.
No one would have picked me out in high school and said, 'This guy is going to be in show business.' I don't have any of the talents you would normally associate with show business.
I called my business manager in California and said, 'Sell all of my stock' - what little of it I had - and it's the only smart financial move I ever made.
It was my first big relationship and it was just very abusive. I wouldn't give him the credit of naming him, if he ever reads this. But he was older, in the music business - or so he said.
The most important lesson I've learned in this business is how to say no. I have said no to a lot of temptations, and I am glad I did.
Nobody has a crystal ball, and part of evolving a business plan is to say, 'I might have said we're going left, but I see the opportunity and we're going right.'
If I wasn't performing, I wasn't alive. That's the truth. My parents had absolutely no interest in the business, but they knew it made me happy, so they said 'Go for it, girl!'
I said, to hell with the whole thing, to hell with show business. I'm gonna make a new life for myself, and I got off drugs, completely kicked all that stuff.
I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don't hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.
The first thing out of Fidel Castro's mouth to me, he looked me right in the eye and said, 'You're a man of great courage.'
An investment said to have an 80% chance of success sounds far more attractive than one with a 20% chance of failure. The mind can't easily recognize that they are the same.
Sometimes there are things worth risking your life for. It was Jesus who said if you want to save your life, you have to lose it.
Louis Pasteur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' If you're really engaged in the writing, you'll work yourself out of whatever jam you find yourself in.
I read the script for Wonder Boys, and I said that was almost perfect, it was so classy, cool and funny. It's a really specific thing. We stuck to it, it turned out good and a lot of people liked it.
I say the same thing that I've said for decades now, which is: don't go over to Japan trying to change it, thinking that you know better. Go there trying to understand.
As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.
That said, there is a tendency to help the large industrial conglomerate more quickly than the small company you have never heard of. That is something in the culture we are trying to change.
I don't think I've been too optimistic. The government believes the contraction will be around 1.5 per cent, as the central bank said. However, we're waiting to see the Commission estimate.
Too many people in government seem to think they are above regular folks, and I said I would expect humility in the way each member of my team served- that they would recognize that the taxpayer is boss.
In mid-May, the House of Representatives approved the full amount of money that the Veterans Administration said was needed for next year - plus an additional $1 billion increase for veterans' health care.
And this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they've gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.
