As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that's fine. But even if you don't quote-unquote make it, you're fine if you've given it your whole heart and soul.
A landlord is showing a couple around an apartment. The husband looks up and says, 'Wait a minute. This apartment doesn't have a ceiling.' The landlord answers, 'That's OK. The people upstairs don't walk around that much.'
A celebrated people lose dignity upon a closer view.
If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.
I grew up in a household where we all celebrated who we were. There was no space to make people feel different or 'less than.'
A lot of people think this is a goodie two-shoes talking. But we do have a tendency to complain rather than celebrating who we are. I learned at my mother's knee it's better to appreciate what's happening... I think we kind of talk ourselves into the negative sometimes.
I'm a clown, which could be a public health role. I'm really interested in moving our society away from a society needing Xanax and Prozac, and that is really feeling depressed, to one that is celebrating, and so I find just walking around in colorful clothes, people smile.
One of the things people don't really recognise about the similarities between country and hip-hop is that they're celebrations of pride in a lifestyle.
Even in Congo, where conflicts are happening, people have births, weddings, deaths, and celebrations.
I try to bring all that I am to my work and all that I experience. That includes how people react to the way I am - the prejudice and the celebrations.
I've lost count of the plane tickets I've had in my pocket for people's weddings and other celebrations which I've had to tear up because I was making a film. How many things like that can you miss and still be in people's lives?
I have no use for people who throw their weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.
Look at the way celebrities and politicians are using Facebook already. When Ashton Kutcher posts a video, he gets hundreds of pieces of feedback. Maybe he doesn't have time to read them all or respond to them all, but he's getting good feedback and getting a good sense of how people are thinking about that and maybe can respond to some of it.
I'm not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We're not 'celebrities', whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They're what people meet.
People want to act like they know celebrities. They want to see pictures. They want to know where you're going. They want to hear you talk about your family.
I don't give away my shoes to celebrities for free. I'm only happy when people like what I do and make the effort to buy them. I would not be happy to see people in my shoes if I knew that they had to be paid to do it, that they had to be pushed.
I kind of understand now why people freak out when they see celebrities that they love, because that's how I feel about every single Muppet.
And people say it all the time: 'You're a celebrity.' No, I'm an actor. I'm a producer. I'm a director. I'm a toad. I'm roadkill. I'm anything but a celebrity.
I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy.
It took me a good decade of hiding in my house and not going outside to even, like, get my arms around this idea of celebrity, where suddenly people are looking for you to pick your nose or get a shot of you kissing some woman. It's a very discombobulating thing.
