My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.
I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
I've been in the Los Angeles Children's Chorus since I was 8.
Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.
My principal anguish, and the wellspring of all my joys and sorrows, has been the incessant merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.
I've never been at odds with the world of contemporary artists. If there is any animosity, it's one-sided.
I had been very close to Anne Bancroft when we worked together in The Miracle Worker.
The celebrity-chef thing, even at its worst, its most annoying, its silliest, its goofiest, its most egregious and cynical, has been a good thing.
It really annoys me that I'm vain, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to discard that tendency.
I think the diplomatic-security needs in Iraq were an anomaly. There's never been a bulge of requirements that large ever before.
I've been able to make films over the past 10 years but still maintain my anonymity.
I would've liked to have been Poussin, if I'd had a choice, in another time.
It's always been my dream to do a dance scene with Anthony Hopkins.
I've been called communist, socialist, anti-American.
Because I'm anti-war, I've been called pro-Taliban.
I've never had a sinus infection or been on antibiotics since cutting out dairy.
I know all of the antiques stores in Buenos Aires. I've been in every one of them, picking things out.
Rameswaram has, since antiquity, been an important pilgrimage destination.
My fears and anxieties throughout my whole life have been slowly squeezing my voice.
I have been apolitical all my life.
