I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try.

I didn't know if I had the music for it or if I could pull off the larger concert experience. Then I realized if I can just continue to be myself I'll be all right.

With 'Bright Star' and with 'The Piano ' too I felt a kind of sadness about it being in such a different era because of my lack of experience with the era. And one of the ways I'd get over it is to remind myself that every film even if it's contemporary creates its own world.

When I'm writing I'm constantly thinking about myself because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience but I know that my songs have validity to them and that's why the fans are there.

When I'm writing I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived you know?

I would love to be a father. I had a great father who taught me how gratifying that is. I'm not going to deny myself that. I think I'd be good at it. Everybody wants that experience. I definitely do.

The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela where I couldn't find a place for myself for years and years.

When I'm home on a break I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't force myself. I don't sit down and say I've got to practice.

I always considered myself as a character actor. I always try to be versatile to show different sides of human experience.

Performing is a profound experience at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.

I had some experience in dealing with people who have mental illness and depression but I didn't see the signs in myself. I couldn't ask for help because I didn't know I needed help.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself and the paintings appear as in a dream.

I do not want to be the angel of any home: I want for myself what I want for other women absolute equality. After that is secured then men and women can take turns being angels.

With patient and firm determination I am going to press on for jobs. I'm going to press on for equality. I'm going to press on for the sake of our children. I'm going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I am going to press on.

I want for myself what I want for other women absolute equality.

I align myself with almost all researchers in assuming that anything we do is a composite of whatever genetic limitations were given to us by our parents and whatever kinds of environmental opportunities are available.

I consider myself to have been the bridge between the shotgun and the binoculars in bird watching. Before I came along the primary way to observe birds was to shoot them and stuff them.

But I didn't really enjoy my secondary education that much probably because I am a very physical person and don't enjoy sitting at a desk all day. I just dragged myself through GCSE and A Levels so it suited me very much to go on to drama school which was very active.

I also found that for myself since I've had no religious education it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.

I don't think of myself as a policy expert. I think education is the most important thing.

And really the basis I think of achieving some success in what I want to do today comes from my mother's push to get me to read and to make something of myself from the standpoint of an education.

Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker living in Flint Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.

A person like myself born and raised in the inner city of Atlanta Georgia to lower-middle-class parents. But I had the opportunity to get an education to go and earn a commission in the United States Army to serve for 22 years to lead men and women in combat.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.