In my early years, there were a number of experiences that made me decide I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. There were a number of issues I wanted to address. And I wanted to use my career as a platform.
Maybe it's my age that makes me very conscious of loose threads, but I don't think that's an earmark of a fine product. And whenever I have a deep-seated feeling like that, I convey it to the person who made it. Sometimes they curse me, and sometimes they thank me.
If people work for me over the years, I expect them to be paid what they're owed, but I don't expect them to be paid more than they earn.
I was married to someone who had more money than me, but because I was the stronger earner and we lived in California - a shocking thing slapped me in the face when we divorced and I had to end up paying him my earnings.
It was not any grace in me, but God that put this earnest care into my heart, that I should be one of the hunters or fishers whom long ago God foreshowed would come in the last days.
I never was deeply interested in any object; I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came at some time - no matter how distant, in some way, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised, it came. And yet, I have always had so little faith. God forgive me.
Now when I came to go up to operations, I went down to this patient's room and got down on my knees at the foot of the bed and earnestly asked the Lord to help us and to help me.
The whole world appears to me like a huge vacuum, a vast empty space, whence nothing desirable, or at least satisfactory, can possibly be derived; and I long daily to die more and more to it; even though I obtain not that comfort from spiritual things which I earnestly desire.
For me and my entire generation, we took on this kind of sarcastic, ironic, snarkiness because it seemed the most extreme reaction to the earnestness of hippies.
Being traditional is a choice for me. South Indian families bring up their children with a sense of freedom, self-respect and self-value. We do whatever we have to with earnestness and honesty, including being uninhibited. Yet we hold onto our roots.
My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have been my gravest reportorial offense during the early years of reporting. When I discuss the book with students, they often ask me how I could 'stand by' in the face of so much suffering; the egregiousness wasn't my powerlessness but my surprise.
For me, it's a purity thing about the joke itself. It's a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that's a legitimate item you have there. For me, it's nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It's just not what I'm in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.
I'm too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom's earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works.
My mum's amazing - every time I achieve something in my career, she buys me a diamond earring.
People who don't know how old I am can cast me as the woman in 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' and can cast me as Stella in 'Streetcar Named Desire,' and they are miles apart.
I can hold a cup of sake on a full moon in Japan, and the reflection of the moon in that little cup can make me feel so enthusiastic about beauty. That one good, magical moment can give me enough to create other things like the teardrop earring or necklace.
When I speak at events, I often wear my dad's ties and my mom's earrings. It's a small, almost secret way of having them with me when I'm up there onstage, talking to a roomful of strangers. It makes me feel safe.
Ah... romance to me is spontaneity. It's not diamond earrings; it's a bunch of daffodils that's freshly picked from the field.
My daughter is one of my greatest inspirations. She's an environmentalist, she plays piano, she's raising money for the earthquake victims in Nepal. Every day she surprises me and teaches me something.
I felt very at home in California, but the place is prone to earthquakes, and the one in 1994 scared the life out of me. For months afterwards, I felt that every time I sat down, I should have put on a seatbelt.
