I still think you people need to be curious [in order to absorb the culture]. You need to search Uzbekistani pop music.

The first question [American college kids] asked me was, 'What state is Kuwait in?' They thought Kuwait was in America.

If you've ever seen album covers for Arab female pop stars, it looks like the designer was paid five dollars to make them, and the extreme femaleness is astounding.

I'm fascinated by evil queens. They're very alluring and repellent at the same time, and I'm into that dichotomy.

The vast majority of women musicians function under singular names like 'Cher' 'Madonna'. They have to get married almost immediately to preserve their honour.

There are very few pop people I'm interested in working with.

I feel like there is an emphasis against teaching geography in American schools. Americans don't say, "I'm going to Germany." They say, "I'm going to Europe."

I was one of five out of 100 people who passed the test, which just proved to me how little Americans are taught geography.

I've never been to China. I only know what the West is telling me about China.

I had a story-telling mother; she's written novels and short stories. So I feel like maybe I'm staying alive by telling tales.

My music doesn't exist in a vacuum; there's a script and there's an actor and it's about to come together.

A moment of kindness can fill your heart with infinite joy.

Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.

To be successful, you need to really work hard. And every study in the last 50 years says that successful people say, "I am not smarter than anybody else. I just want to work harder and longer."

Growing up in Australia, you never feel like you're going to live beyond that place. You wake up and you go to the beach, and you do your homework. You're just a kid.

New Zealand's been pretty quiet on human rights issues, which we will be taking rather more interest in, and in international labor issues.

Today we say all art is political. But I'd say all art has to do with ethics. Which after all really comes to the same thing. It's a matter of attitudes.

Here is another secret: I have no business being fascinated by you.

Climate change is a process that typically is non-linear. Even upon examination, it lives in comparison with other moments.

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

I consider my teenage years as being desperately unhappy.