OCD is a really serious condition - it's a proper thing. It's not just, 'Oh, you like your pens to be straight'. For me, it would always go in tandem with being unhappy. The unhappier I was, the worse it got.
I've always felt from everyone I talk to that the fans feel like I'm tangible and they can talk to me and they know me.
I'm blessed to have a platform that allows me to speak to many at once. I recognize that I can make consciousness a tangible thing for young people.
For me, social media isn't just about connecting with friends and sharing photos; it's a bigger, more tangled web that's led me to jobs working in television, speaking gigs around the country, and it's even helped me land my first book deal!
I wouldn't go so far as to make 'You Don't Own Me' a tango or 'It's My Party' a hip-hop thing. Believe me, those things have been suggested to me. But I thought if I could stay true to the song, the arrangements would work. I'm really enjoying singing them.
When we go out there, I want to be the act that, no matter who's in that crowd, they've never seen a better act than me. I'm gonna empty the tank.
Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.
When I was working with Reebok, Paul Fineman sent me to see David Stern to try to explain to him, basically, the tanning of America: That all rappers wanted to be basketball players and basketball players wanted to be rappers.
I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount to figuring out a trigonometry question.
My parents took me to the Bronte parsonage in England when I was a teenager. I had a fight with my mum, burst into tears, jumped over a stile and ran out into the moors. It felt very authentic: A moor really is an excellent place to have a temper tantrum.
The way the music comes to you starts to affect how you listen to music. When you're a kid, it's 'Does it rock? Does it make me feel good? Does it make me tap my feet? Does it make me go to sleep?'
I first started doing some somewhat technology-based shows in the '80s. If you wanted to get real technical about it, back in the '70s I used to open up with Utopia with just me on the stage with a four-track tape recorder. So, technically, I've been using the help of various devices pretty much throughout my career.
I'm a city boy. I grew up in a big city, in Birmingham, and I want to write about a city. It's much richer tapestry for me than green fields. Fields and wild life make me feel ill. I don't like - I don't want to write about that stuff.
I remember my very first audition for a film. I was in Seattle. They were taping the session, and I just went crazy. The director finally said, 'Zoe, what are you doing? The camera's right here. Just talk to me.' And it took that director saying that to me to change everything.
Early on, I started realizing the power of hip hop as a fan. I remember taping DJ Red Alert and DJ Marley Marl on the radio. I recorded their shows to hear my favorite artists and songs at that time. I realized then that hip hop culture could move the world, because it was moving me.
My mother told me I was dancing before I was born. She could feel my toes tapping wildly inside her for months.
I wasn't into tapping when it began dying down. Ever since I started, it's been alive for me. I just want to keep on dancing. I want to do it all.
Tardiness in literature can make me nervous.
Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother saw me and my sister off to college, and my first novel was published when I was 46. This 'tardiness' isn't something I'm proud of, but I'm happy to be an inspiration to others who arrive at these milestones later than most of us do.
Kids used to pick on me because I was quiet, I was an easy target. But I wasn't quiet because I was scared.
