Even the largest of my dreams and ambitions, I realize with increasing dismay, were puny, measly, compared to the object of my dreaming. I would not say my life to date has been built overmuch of compromise, but still, it surrounds me.
I was drawn to it much to my father's dismay. He wanted me to be a pianist like he was, but I had coarser tastes - like that old joke: What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians? A drummer.
Sometimes when I go out on the road, I feel almost embarrassed or dismayed because I can't be the image of what kids want me to be. So I just try to be myself, and usually that works out OK.
People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.
I had to learn to dismiss people who would criticize me based on nothing, but I also had to learn not to believe the people who would compliment me and think I was great based on nothing. And that led me to have a very, very strong sense of myself and my strengths.
Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily.
Golf made me feel like a loser. So I dismissed it.
Tyler Perry's brand is faith, family and this whole thing that I've built, while my company, 34th Street Films, is like Disney's Touchstone. We can do anything. People don't know what to expect from me yet.
You can't get anymore classic than being a part of a Disney animated film. To me, that's something I can have in my back pocket for the rest of my life. I'll be able to show it to my kids. I'll be walking around Disneyland, and it'll be bizarre to shake hands with Rapunzel.
Because we put ourselves in a movie or on TV, then it must mean we want to be completely open to the world. Sometimes, people will run up to you as if this is Disneyland and I'm a character. I understand their point of view, but it's difficult to explain how terrified it makes me. I'm so nervous.
After the novel was published, I came to feel that I couldn't call myself Orthodox anymore. It's so patriarchal, anti-women, anti-gay. There was something about writing 'Disobedience'... it felt like I had put it all in the book. I had done my best by it, recorded what it meant for me. I felt I was done.
I didn't think the teachers had the right to tell me what to do. I would just disobey, talk in the classroom, get very bad grades.
I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom... Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical.
And the funny thing is, I've always been an optimist - it's practically a congenital disorder with me.
I suffered from eating disorders when I was just a kid. I did not like me or the way I looked. But back then, you could not tell anyone.
People like to talk a lot about me, about how I have anxiety or social disorders. I'll admit to anxiety, but it has nothing to do with media or being in front of a camera or being around people. It has to do with dealing with the sparring that I'm going to have or the workouts that I'm going to have from day to day.
Cleaning isn't all that interesting to me. I'm disorganized.
My writing life is always a bit disorganized. It's hard for me to get going, but sometimes, once I begin, I go like the wind.
Usually, jet lag is not this big of an issue for me. I'm not sure why I'm so disoriented this time. It could be due to the amount of chocolate and french fries I've eaten in the last two and a half weeks.
