Elegance is always in style for men. There are all different kinds of elegance. It can be silk, it can be a T-shirt.
That's the Elektra I tried to portray: one that's always in the grey. She is a tortured soul.
Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.
Man's respect for the imponderables varies according to his mental constitution and environment. Through certain modes of thought and training, it can be elevated tremendously, yet there is always a limit.
My books are always about somebody who is taken from aloneness and isolation - often elevated loneliness - to community. It may be a denigrated community that is filthy and poor, but they are not alone; they are with people.
My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.
To me, the avocation of a teacher has something elevating and exciting. While surrounded by the young, one may always be doing good.
Here is the truth: While at the University of Florida, and now at The Ohio State University, I have always followed proper reporting protocols and procedures when I have learned of an incident involving a student-athlete, coach or member of our staff by elevating the issues to the proper channels.
On 'Redneck Island,' a show I love, there was a lot of drama and storylines going on because someone's always voted off the island through process of elimination.
Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations of elitism, mandarinism. Open form was like common ground on which all might graze their cattle - it was not to be closed in by usurping landlords.
I have always admired and had enormous respect for Elizabeth Taylor. She was not only an incredible actress but an amazing woman as well.
On the subject of literary genres, I've always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I'd love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.
I think that music is crucially important in Shakespeare - and, clearly, was an important part of the Elizabethan theatre. And, it's always been something that was a profound element of the experience of Shakespeare that I have been drawn to - and interpreters have, as well.
My wife and I have always been Anglophiles. We always felt we were born in another life in England. I was in the Elizabethan era, and she was from the Norman conquest.
My background was always more soulful pop. I was named after Ella Fitzgerald, and when I was a kid, I was listening to Lauryn Hill, Etta James, Joss Stone. For me, it was always about the voice.
My style of singing has always been referred to 'soul' singing when it fact it's more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I'm closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.
I can do the vocal acrobatics but I really try not to. I've always been drawn to singers who sing it like it is, pure, straight down the line: Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Smith, Carole King. Simplicity is really important to me.
I've always been into guitars... we want to put keyboards on, but keyboard players don't look cool onstage, they just keep their heads down. There has never been a cool keyboard player, apart from Elton John.
I've always been searching to arrive at a certain voice that will probably elude me forever.
When 'happiness' eludes us - as, eventually, it always will - we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again.
