Ever since I could form coherent thoughts, I knew I was a girl trapped inside a boy's body. There was never any confusion in my mind. The confusing part was why no one else could see what was wrong.
The notion that the mind and body are actually different sides of the same coin goes all the way back to the origins of medicine. For most of its history, the practice was not separated from other aspects of human activity.
It felt like a series of coincidences and luck that I ended up getting the part in 'Trainspotting,' but it's been an incredible journey since then. Every now and then, I sit and really think about it, and it blows my mind. I have to stop because I don't want my brain to implode.
No matter what you do, your person comes through. You can't completely change yourself on the screen. I had in mind someone colder and more in control, but I couldn't do it. This human note just crept in and maybe it's better.
One of the things that I think makes me successful is the way in which I collaborate with others. In my opinion, nothing great is ever the product of one mind. It's always a consequence of some sort of self-critical collaboration.
I'm a fan of Bjork, a fan of Premier, you know, those are the first two names that come to my mind. You know, I've learned a lot from every person I've collaborated with, from Madlib to Jean Grae and Hi-Tek, to Mos to DJ Quik, to even somebody like Jermaine Dupri. I've taken something important away from every experience.
Successful collaboration, in your mind, could be that your opinion is the most valuable and becomes the prevailing sort of direction. That's not collaborating.
Popular culture isn't a freeze-frame; it is images zapping by in rapid-fire succession, which is why collage is such an effective way of representing contemporary life. The blur between images creates a kind of motion in the mind.
My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it's very complex, it's very profound.
And as the hour approached for the execution, in his own mind, Collins became both the executioner and the victim. He would pace up and down, transformed in almost a kind of exorcism when he knew he was responsible for taking someone's life.
I never, ever had it in my mind that I wanted to be in the record industry, because I still contend that the record industry is an insidious affair. It's this terrible collision between art and commerce, and it will always be that way.
Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure.
Picasso's superhuman gift for draftsmanship might have made him lazy about pursuing the full potential of color. It was not unusual for him to build a composition by first outlining figures and objects in black and then filling the interstices in a perfunctory manner that can put one in mind of a museum-shop coloring book.
The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.
Today's kids have a mind of their own, and they know how to exercise it. Even if I wanted to tell Sara or my son Ibrahim how to lead their lives - which I don't - they would not listen to me. Luckily, Sara chose to complete her studies before pursuing acting. She attended Columbia University and then devoted her attention to Bollywood.
For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?
I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity, it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.
Olympism... exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, mind and will.
As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don't get that.
