You know that genie where you get three wishes? One that has never changed for me is I would like to sing, and move an audience through song.
'Aladdin' was probably my favorite Disney animation when I was a kid. The animation was great and Robin Williams was unbelievable as the Genie. 'Aladdin' was an amazing adventure and the lead character was a hero for guys, which I loved. It wasn't a princess or a girl beating the odds; it was a street rat. That seemed really cool to me.
It's not surprising to me that in a country born of racial genocide, the issue of race is still an open wound on the American soul. We haven't dealt with it.
I'm glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.
Being half Kashmiri, it's always special for me to shoot in the valley and to be there with the locals. They are all very warm people who are very hospitable and genteel and always welcome everyone with an open heart.
Everyone's surprised when they meet me. I guess it's because I've played tough cookies for so long... It's what I do best. I'm not sure I could pull off a genteel Southern belle.
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.
I wasn't close to my father, but I wanted to be all my life. He had a funny sense of humor, and he laughed all the time - good and loud, like I do. He was a gay Irish gentleman and very good-looking. And he wanted to be close to me, too, but we never had much time together.
My father would invite me sweetly to come and sit on a stool at his feet, and, as I let myself trustingly down, he would gently kick the seat from under me - and laugh.
Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.
This quality, I mean Geoffrey was with me, was very easy doing - he loved me very much, I loved him very much, and we understood each other so well that it was a pleasure to make music.
Of course the death of Geoffrey has caused a lot of trauma to me generally.
'Cue for Treason,' by Geoffrey Trease, radicalized my young girl brain and made me want to be a gender-bending, sonnet-writing anarchist. It really made something roar to life inside of me.
I think of the world as geographical regions, and it excites me to think about the opportunity that Europe can have if we consider it to be the 500-million-people region that it is.
What drives me is exploration with a purpose, more the classic Royal Geographical Society genre.
Mathematics was hard, dull work. Geography pleased me more. For dancing I was quite enthusiastic.
I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.
You won't see me writing about particle physics, or even planetary geology, or chemistry. I practically failed chemistry, and if I had to write a book in any of those areas, I don't think it would go well.
Every successful career I've ever known was filled with long periods of meandering, months or even years when no one knew what would happen next. Look at me: I started as a geology major turned failed realtor.
All my work comes from perceiving. I kept seeing things that were brooding in me. I'm not a geometric artist.
