You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.
Emily Dickinson has haunted my life - her poems, her persona, all the tales about her solitude. Ever since I discovered her in the seventh grade, I've had a crush on that spinster in white, who had such a heroic and startling inner landscape of her own.
Some readers may be disturbed that I wrote 'The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson' in Emily's own voice. I wasn't trying to steal her thunder or her music. I simply wanted to imagine my way into the head and heart of Emily Dickinson.
'My Name Is' by Eminem was a song that changed my life.
It is to be regretted that few persons who have arrived at any degree of eminence or fame, have written Memorials of themselves, at least such as have embraced their private as well as their public life.
Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
But seriously, I think overall in the scheme of things winning an Emmy is not important. Let's get our priorities straight. I think we all know what's really important in life - winning an Oscar.
I've watched the Emmys for almost my whole life, so it was crazy to finally be there in the audience clapping and actually going on stage. Hopefully one day I'll get to be actually nominated.
I am so enriched because so much has happened in my life. The way I can express myself is because of the life I have led. It's only when you experience life can you emote it.
What appealed to me was that the focus of 'North Atlantic' was more about performance rather than emoting, because I was at a point in life where it was nice not to have to emote all over the place.
The longer you live, the smarter you get because you've been around. You've seen things. You've gone through different emotional experiences in your own life, and hopefully, you understand things better. And that makes you a better actress.
There were time when I was into method acting that I did have moments of residual character emotions, because the method bases your emotional responses as a character on emotional experiences from your real life.
Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.
Music is the emotional life of most people.
I'm in total awe of the technique of great film people. Because if you get your emotional life up to perfection by miracle on Take One, you better have a technique to keep doing it again and again and again.
If war occurs, that positive adult contact in every shape is needed more than ever. It will be a matter of emotional life and death. There's not a handy one-minute way of talking to your kid about war.
Advertising, music, atmospheres, subliminal messages and films can have an impact on our emotional life, and we cannot control it because we are not even conscious of it.
As a father, I've tried to encourage my children to have a broader and deeper emotional life than I've had. I want my sons to be able to express their feelings about things.
The language can be different, but the emotional lives are the same no matter whether you're doing Shakespeare or Stoppard or something else... The emotional life is all the same.
We want the digital world to bend to your physical life, your real emotional life as a person, and we don't want you to bend to computers.
