I grew up having to do manual labor because people always told me that I was an ugly girl. I've never had the permission to be myself except for when I'm doing manual labor. Because in manual labor, it's about, 'Can you pick this up, can you move this here,' and I could.
Until 1943 I received no stipend. I was able to support myself as my mother was the daughter of a relatively wealthy cotton manufacturer.
I don't listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself - kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood.
I'm an impatient person in many respects. I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations. It forces me to deliver.
Yu Na Kim, Mao Asada, Carolina Kostner - all these girls can do triple-triples in their sleep, and they have the skating skills and the spins and the rest of the technical jumps. So I have to have that as well if I want to be able to call myself 'competitive' against them. And when I say 'competitive,' I mean I want to win.
To run a big marathon and win takes five months. When Iām on the starting line, my mind starts reviewing what I have been doing the last five months. I believe in my training, and I treat myself as the best one standing on that line.
It's strange: I've done so many things up until I did 'Obvious Child,' including writing children's books and making 'Marcel the Shell.' To me, the through-line is incredibly clear: it all comes from wanting to be connected to my own inner voice and not wanting to be on somebody else's agenda if that means that I can't be myself.
I'm marching for women; I'm marching for the LGBT community. I'm marching for immigrants. I happen to fall into all three categories, so I'm marching for myself at the end of the day and for my family and my friends. And for whoever else deserves it.
When I was young, I did Baby Guess and Guess Kids - Paul Marciano saw me when I was a baby and decided I was going to be his next whatever. After Guess Kids, my mom made me stop. She would not let me sign with an agency until I was 17 because she wanted me to be a normal kid and accept myself for who I was.
I would like to be Maria, but there is La Callas who demands that I carry myself with her dignity.
I'm not pretty. The truth is I didn't think I could be a model at all. I was looking at some of the guys on the walls at Irene Marie and I thought to myself 'Jesus Christ. I can't do this. I don't look anything like these guys'.
Myself, Marion Jones and Michael Johnson all got married on the same day because it was the only point on the athletics' schedule we could fit in. October 3, 1998.
Awards are not the only markers of success; I don't judge myself just based on them. I believe that each cinema-goer has his own mental trophies.
Alas, in 1929 came the Stock Market crash and everything changed and became worrisome. People started practicing conservatism because of financial losses, myself included.
If someone is going to spend a whole game marking you, then there may be games when I will have to sacrifice myself for the team and take them away and create space for a team-mate.
In my marriages, I'd lost parts of who I was because I was trying to mold myself into what I thought a man wanted me to be.
I could never be with a married man. I just can't. I could never imagine myself being the mistress of somebody.
Every two months, I allow myself a splurge day where I eat thick, doughy pizza from Pizzeria Uno or an ice cream sundae from my store with birthday-cake ice cream, Marshmallow Fluff, and toppings mixed in.
I don't think I'm in any position to call myself a martial artist. I'm a student of the martial arts.
You're only as good as your body of work, and everybody has issues, whether it's Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. I'm not comparing myself to those guys, but you learn more from the misses than the hits.
