I've become really strict in a lot of ways, but I'm also very lenient. I'm kind to myself.
I have from time to time been a double A or triple A personality. I'm not anymore. I'm more lenient on myself.
'Funny People' is my favorite performance of myself to date. Even though it's a comedy and there are serious moments, I really felt like Leo felt like a real person. It didn't feel like I was playing myself. Whether it's a comedy or drama, I just try to make it as realistic as possible.
When I ask myself what are the great things we got from the Renaissance, it's the great art, the great music, the science insights of Leonardo da Vinci. Two hundred years from now, when you ask what are the great things that came from this era, I think it's going to be an understanding of the universe around us.
To me, when - just like when you watch a movie or you watch a TV show, to me, you know, Nicole Kidman or Leonardo DiCaprio, you know that they are actors, but also, great actors find that extension of themselves. So, when I walk through that curtain, I find the extension of myself of being the Ravishing Russian in there.
I have questioned myself about the brutality in the last few novels. Actually in 'The Leopard,' in hindsight, I feel I went a little bit too far with screaming blood. There are a couple of scenes that I regret and wish I had the chance to rewrite. 'Phantom' has less blood.
There's something nice about being part of a trailblazing group. It's hard to look at myself that way because I look at Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoops and Rebecca Lobo and Dawn Staley in that way.
Thanks be to God. Since my leaving the drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.
Nobody in my school knew who Bill Monroe was, or Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and barely Johnny Cash. Nobody spoke that language. I proceeded to get myself kicked out.
Whenever I sang, I said to myself, 'Maybe tonight.' I would never let down, no matter how few people were listening.
I never fail to feel let down when I see myself on the screen.
My parents instilled a really good work ethic from when I was little - if you want to have money to spend on holidays, you earn it. So I've always been someone who wanted to be able to survive by myself, but I think you have to let down the barriers a little bit - let other people in.
Lumpy and lazy; I aspired to lethargy. In the second year of university, I missed half my classes just because I couldn't pull myself out of bed.
When I was younger, my mother and I, we'd have these crazy, crazy fights. Everyone would storm out mad, and the only way that I'd be able to express myself was to write her. We would write letters back and forth for days. When I'm writing, I feel uninterrupted. I write what I'm going through and how I see it.
I always seem to find myself fighting the law of equilibrium - the great leveling force that brings things to the mean and takes the 'cartoonishness' out of life. Perhaps I am doing a very unnatural thing... If Einstein were still alive I would ask him about it.
Over the years, I found myself traveling parts of the Lewis and Clark Trail, putting my hands in the river where they set out from St. Louis, viewing the Great Falls of Montana, standing by the same Pacific Ocean they saw with such joy.
I will go to the next election saying to Australians, vote for me, vote for the Liberal Party, and I will become your PM. So I'm offering myself as the alternative PM - that's one way people describe the Leader of the Opposition - but I'm not in politics for myself to realize a personal ambition.
I made a commitment... both to myself and to some supporters to carefully consider a run for the Liberal leadership for the Liberal Party of Canada.
I think a lot of my work has been a weird attempt to liberate myself, but it's not altogether successful.
It's incredibly liberating to spend an hour talking to someone and not caring about what you sound like. It's about understanding myself. Sometimes I'll speak to my therapist for an hour a day. It's become part of my routine.
