A lot of things encouraged me to start my label. I think it's very important for an artist to know how many records they've sold and where they've sold. I know that I have never been treated the way I'm supposed to be treated - like an artist. That's...
The problem with looking in the mirror is that you never know how you will feel about what you see. Sometimes, when my hormones are out of sync, I have no interest in the mirror, and if I do look I think everything is all wrong. Other times, I am qui...
Certainly working with teens keeps me up to date with language and with certain kinds of thinking. I often feel like I have to go back to that 17-year-old Chris Crutcher, and that forms the core voice. I can draw on teens from 1964 to 2001 to find a ...
I don't think I'll ever lose the feeling that I had when I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - Harper Lee was going back into her childhood. I grew up in a real small town - Lee's was in the South, mine the Northwest - but small towns have a lot in common...
I feel that I had been rescued from the gutter by America. One day I was under the gutter, chased by police, thinking dogs were going to get me. I laid there listening to the dogs and the gutter. The next day, there I am standing on the Olympic platf...
When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just ...
There are different ways that kids who are gay take on the rejection and alienation they feel. The way I dealt with it was to say, 'You know what? You're imposing judgments on me and condemnations, but I don't accept them. I'm going to instead turn t...
I'm a compulsive note-taker, and I used to feel self-conscious about pulling out my little notebook and taking notes during a casual conversation. Then I noticed that people really seemed to enjoy it; the fact that I was taking notes made their remar...
I certainly used to wish that I was skinny, lighter-skinned, with long, pretty hair. But only because I used to get made fun of for being the absolute opposite. I didn't see all of that stuff as the American Dream. I just wanted to look normal. Now t...
If you're the person living closest to the parent who's going to need help, and you take on the whole role of primary caregiver, you can be pretty sure your sibling who lives farthest away is going to call you and say, 'You don't know what you're doi...
When tragedy strikes, or even when it looms, our families will have the opportunity to look into our hearts to see whether we know what we said we knew. Our children will watch, feel the Spirit confirm that we lived as we preached, remember that conf...
It's hard to look inside a person to answer a question about why anybody wants to be president. I suppose a combination of ambition, ego, and a real feeling that he could make a difference and could accomplish some things. All you ever had to do for ...
I learned from working in the fashion world that if I have a day when I feel slapped in the face, or if someone has been mean, I just have to get back up and it will be another day. I think about what I'm grateful for. I look at my kids and my husban...
Human beings, in point of fact, are lonely by nature, and one should feel sorry for them and love them and mourn with them. It is certain that people would understand one another better and love one another more if they would admit to one another how...
Such is the facility with which mankind believe at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that mult...
What you are as a single person, you will be as a married person, only to a greater degree. Any negative character trait will be intensified in a marriage relationship, because you will feel free to let your guard down -- that person has committed hi...
I think that when we're looking at things when we're right in the center of things, as opposed to being a bit unmoored from what's going on around us, we see things through a kind of dulling lens of convention, and there's something about extreme emo...
I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor ...
I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other A...
I think I've always been ambitious. It just looks different on me. You know, I have friends who are actresses who go to every party they possibly can to be photographed and really try to make every connection they can, and I admire that and sometimes...
When I was ten years old, I saw a big, fat beetle get squished. I don't recall the circumstances, but that's not important. It's the result that stuck with me. The beetle's thick, viscous insides so closely resembled a crushed blueberry that, to this...
