The great thing about Roald Dahl is he tackled the big questions of life without any fear of being shocking or brutal, because he knew the kids could take it.
What I've really liked doing is combining what you might call art criticism or music criticism with something that is happening in real life.
As an actor, your life experience is just as important as studying.
I am tapping into a place in you that is unexplored, and very dangerous, but I think essential to the creative life of an artist.
It wasn't being an alcoholic - it was going wild. It happened when I got famous. It was like having my teens in my early thirties: blotting out your life, not having to think about anything.
I saw the 'Wizard of Oz' recently and realized that, all my life, I thought they were real monkeys with wings. That's how scary that movie was for me.
Even though it's tiring, I'm having the time of my life.
I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.
All my life, I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.
For the serious biographer, history and the life story of a real individual are inseparably intertwined. Get the facts wrong, or distort them, and the life story gets distorted: becomes fiction.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.
Then I became a mother and it just fills every space, that isn't filled with something else important. It's just like this incredible balloon that blows up and fills life up.
Musicians are so well covered in the press, it would be great to see more outspoken practitioners of green life.
Every once in a while in an actor's life, a cast comes together.
I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.
My life needed to be saved. Not just Foxy. That's my character. That's my work. Inga is a person.
I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.
After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government's responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.
We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.
I still feel like that 17-year-old-kid that fell in love with country music, but I also am allowed to write songs about being a man, too, which I think is the coolest place I've ever been in my life.
I went on countless auditions. I begged my parents until I finally was allowed to be in a theatrical play when I was 13. It was the most important thing in my life.
I do like playing the darker side of life but as much as the lighter side as well. They all resonate out of the same place, which is that everyone has a story to tell. Depending on their upbringing and their history, it determines who they are as an adult. My job is to take the role from there.
Look at somebody like Margaret Sanger, who was married young and had kids but then left her husband and wound up living a kind of single life as she got into the founding of what would become Planned Parenthood.
I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He - I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.
I would love to be a professional athlete. When I was living in Mexico as a teenager, I did seven years of gymnastics and went to the Junior Olympics. I was getting to the level of going to the international competitions, but I was only 14, and my parents were really worried because they did not want that to be my life.
In my case, I played sports my whole life. I got out of college, and I didn't bother to get health care coverage because I just figured I didn't need it. But you know that if you blow out your knee on a basketball court or you get in a car accident, and you're uninsured, it can bankrupt you.
Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
By definition, an actor's life is a recipe for regret. There are always roads you could have taken. But I've lived long enough to realise that each road has its own rewards.
You're over there in the corner either thinking about the dead dog or whatever, you're bringing up your personal life and you need the space, and then somebody throws you a joke. Especially if it's an emotional scene, you don't want the joke.
I've learned that while I'd be a fool not to stay open to the advice and experiences of the smart, amazing people in my life, I also need to listen to what I have to say.
My dog and two cats are such a vital part of my life. To say that I am their owner doesn't reflect at all the profound bond and responsibility that I have towards them.
Physiology and psychology cover, between them, the field of vital phenomena; they deal with the facts of life at large, and in particular with the facts of human life.
I just wanted to be normal. I wanted to have a normal life. I wanted to have children. And when I was picked out of a chorus line and cast in a TV series, I got anxious, so I took the bull by the horns and went to see a psychologist. And it was the greatest move I ever made.
No matter what stage of life you are graduating from or entering, learning how to build and state your case is something every person in the world should know how to do.
My hope is that this life is not all there is. This life is like preparation for what is coming next, and what is coming next is something so glorious that the Bible says minds can't conceive it, eye has never seen, your imagination could never even enter into all that God is preparing for those who love him.