I was asked to act when I couldn't act. I was asked to sing 'Funny Face' when I couldn't sing and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn't dance - and do all kinds of things I wasn't prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

I didn't like England. I couldn't take the look of the place or the style of friendship. I need more intimacy from people than is considered okay there and I felt that my personality and my enthusiasms weren't understood. I had to put a big lid on myself.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television I always did what I wanted to do and if I couldn't I didn't do it. It was a freedom that these days young directors starting out don't have.

I couldn't relate to kid stuff. 'Jimmy doesn't like me!' Who cares? I was worried we didn't have gas money or food. Those were my concerns.

'The Food Network' was just starting in New York and I was getting lots of attention from Mesa Grill. They had no money so if you couldn't get there by subway you couldn't be on. It wasn't like TV was something I really wanted to do - but I knew it would be great publicity for my restaurants.

Well it's very easy for me to gain weight but even though I tried not eating for a week when I was really young I couldn't do it any longer because I liked my food too much.

I wanted to make Jerusalem as feature film. But we couldn't finance it only through theatrical release we couldn't get all the money we needed. We had to get some money from television. So we said ok let's do it both ways. So we did it in four parts.

I had some of the students in my finance class actually do some empirical work on capital structures to see if we could find any obvious patterns in the data but we couldn't see any.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward to have a low threshold of fear because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I totally related to Cole Porter's magnetic pull to any piano that was in the room which he was famous for doing as was Gershwin. You couldn't drag them away from a piano.

It was a mixed blessing to have famous parents. It was tough to go to auditions and be bad since I couldn't be anonymous.

Major success feels a bit like a coronation. Like I'd become a king. I was one of the most famous people in the world loved and hated in equal measure. I couldn't see anything bad with it. It made me a happy person.

I always loved working as an actress but I didn't understand why I couldn't just opt out of being famous. And then I realized you can and I think I did. And eventually I came to understand that you can do that and also keep working.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Touring is tough. You're almost in a haze because you don't really know where you are half the time: You're in a hotel room one moment and the next thing you know you're onstage performing for 60 000 people then you're back on an airplane. It's very hectic and I couldn't do it without my family.

I married him because he told me it was the only way he could protect me. If we were just manager and client my family could do whatever they wanted to get me back but if I was his wife they couldn't.

The breakdown of the black community in order to maintain slavery began with the breakdown of the black family. Men and women were not legally allowed to get married because you couldn't have that kind of love. It might get in the way of the economics of slavery. Your children could be taken from you and literally sold down the river.

A few years ago you couldn't go from TV to film. It was like a 'no no' but I believe when you find a plan and purpose that God has for your life there's not anything man can do to you. Especially when your faith is not really standing in the wisdom of man you're really standing in the wisdom of God.

I don't really go down one path. I wouldn't call myself a Buddhist or a Catholic or a Christian or a Muslim or Jewish. I couldn't put myself into any organized faith.

We decided to try in vitro because both Peter and I felt we couldn't handle another failure. When I miscarried after that we had to come to terms with the possibility that this wasn't meant to be.

It has always felt like a failure that Bjorn and I couldn't keep our family together. You never get it back but to this day I don't regret splitting up. The reason behind our separation is one of those things I definitely don't want to go into!

I - and I still consider myself I'm sorry to tell you a Marxist and a Communist but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure.

It was a very bizarre experience for me to get the songs together go in there and try to deliver them as I would perhaps in a live setting. But I realized that I couldn't take on that coffeehouse style that I came from and go in there and burn it up.

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.