I never got into politics for it to be a career.

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.

I'm hopefully touring with Colin Baker next year in Perfect Strangers. I have performed with Sylvia Simms in poetry and music evenings. I would love to do those for the rest of my career - they are so fun and witty.

Frankly writing poetry for children is plain old fun and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

You know in my music career there was a moment where the irony was just so heavy. There were people in my audience that were the reason I developed neuroses. These people that tortured my life were using my art my poetry as fuel for them to torture other people.

As things are and as fundamentally they must always be poetry is not a career but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

There is no patriotic obligation to help advance the career of a politician who is otherwise pursuing interests that are fundamentally antithetical to your values. That's not the call of patriotism.

I'm not really easy to live with! There needs to be unlimited patience and unconditional love. Men I've known before loved my independent spirit and were proud of my success to the point that they'd become jealous of the time I devote to my career.

Work hard. And have patience. Because no matter who you are you're going to get hurt in your career and you have to be patient to get through the injuries.

Luck is a component that a lot of people in the arts sometimes fail to recognise: that you can have talent perseverance patience but without luck you will not have a successful career.

Music will always be my No. 1 passion but I don't have to be doing it professionally. It's not really about that for me anymore. I feel like I don't have to look at it as a career. I can just rest in it and just be.

Music is the career I'm lucky enough to get paid for but I have other desires and passions.

I started getting these attacks in 2009 just as my music career was taking off. I'd be doing photo-shoots and started to feel like I was having heart attacks. Increasingly I found it difficult to step outside my flat. Things started to get better after I saw a therapist who told me I needed to make peace with my panic attacks.

I maintain that when I finally retire from my career in music I will go and live back in Wales - when I am an old person if I live to be an old person. The water I miss and the air there's something different about it. And I miss the simple life.

My sense is I think it's okay for directors to do movies that speak to other work in their career.

If you look at anybody who's had along career if you look at the choices they've made - even if the movies haven't worked - they've always worked with great filmmakers.

Everybody gets typecast in movies but you have to make wise choices. I'd say around 90 percent of movie casting is about the way you look so you have to fight that. If producers had their way I'd only be in action films but I'm interested in a more varied career than that.

'Immortals' is all action. I love action movies. That's really where I want to spearhead my career.

I really like Gwyneth Paltrow a lot as far as her career because I think she's done a lot of small movies but she's also done great big movies and she's a really great actress.

I was terrified to do 'G.I. Joe.' I had no idea how to do one of those movies. I was kind of scared. You know if one of those doesn't work it's a huge hit on your career. People are like 'Well he couldn't make a $170 million movie work. I don't want him in my film.'

Listen I think movies serve many different purposes from those movies that are frivolous and just an entertainment to movies that just go to exploring the complexities of the human soul. Everything is valid if it's done with honesty and dignity and I actually do both of those types of movies in my career.

You have to understand that crew members make movies so they're seeing a lot of actors all the time in their career acting.

I'm not going to have a perfect career. It's better to be Billy Wilder and make lots of movies and have five or six great ones than to make so few movies that when you make a bad one it crushes you.

Being the son of a filmmaker you are aware of a career as a director. You don't think of it as just movies but as a life.