I did things like Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait. I don't know what those films were about. The women I played in them were not very empowered.

It's quite hard for me being an actress because I actually don't like attention

I basically put myself into directors' hands and let them tell me what to do, and the more they told me what to do, the more I liked it.

Happiness is the absence of suffering. I think it's an interesting way of looking at it. I think the absence of suffering exists very rarely in the world we live in.

The status quo and the media is doing everything it can to fry children's brains and make them grow up maladjusted.

Some people enjoy celebrity. I admire those who do, because if you're going to go through it, you might as well enjoy it.

I regret that I wasn't the kind of person who could enjoy celebrity. It embarrassed me too much.

Early on, I found the attention completely embarrassing. I'd cringe if I saw my picture on the cover of a magazine.

Most of the time I spent in America, I was having a love affair with some American or other. I was just passing through but stayed because of these chaps.

I never dreamed I'd like any city as well as London. San Francisco is exciting, moody, exhilarating. I even love the muted fogs.

My family said that I wanted to act even when I was a child living on a tea plantation in the jungle in India.

Be willing to constantly travel towards the dreams of your future and don’t be afraid to give up the good for the great.

when you know that writing your own book of life is so difficult to begin with, the least you can do for someone else, is to try to read the pages of a person rather than skip through the chapters.

A reasonable probability is the only certainty.

We can't continue with a justice of vengeance. Peace will require us to accept a certain degree of impunity it's inevitable.

I had written for Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman in the past. Jimmy had a different voice, and different priorities. He couldnt be the bad guy in the joke; he couldnt upset people, really.

That's what American democracy has come down to at these town hall meetings: old people and gun nuts, which is a terrible combination. I heard somebody yell 'AK-47!' and a lady yelled, 'Bingo!'

But I never worried about having a child in my 40s, which is unusual - normally, I'm the queen of worry.

what are we all sent into the world for, but to be of use to each other?

I would describe my style of songwriting as classic. I learned very early on and have stuck to the core principles of song structure regardless of which genre I'm writing in.

There is a tendency to want to treat blacks as a monolithic socioeconomic group.