Anybody who can dial a telephone can master tennis scoring in about 15 minutes.
I had a dialect coach from the Royal Shakespeare Company who was from Sheffield.
The contribution of West African languages to Ebonics is absolutely infinitesimal. What it actually is is a very interesting hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects that we often learn about in school.
There are lots of things, including changing the kind of inner dialog, that can mitigate anxiety. And yes, there are people who have the glass half full and glass half empty, and I'm afraid the glass is going to break and I'll cut myself on the shards.
Finding a writer who can write decent kids' dialog and finding kids that can act realistically and not 'cute' is an effort.
Actors do tend to get pigeonholed. People want to know who you are so they can put you in a box. It's lovely to be known for such diametrically opposite roles.
Anything nice that's said about me is diametrically opposed to who I am.
There's no recreating what Michael Jackson and Diana Ross did in 'The Wiz'. We're trying to figure out who these characters are in 2015. How would these times change their motives, change the things they would say and do?
Until I was twenty-eight, I had a kind of buried self who didn't know she could do anything but make white sauce and diaper babies. I didn't know I had any creative depths.
Why do otherwise sane, competent, strong men, men who can wrestle bears or raid corporations, shrink away in horror at the thought of washing a dish or changing a diaper?
I read academic books on courtesan culture at the turn-of-the century in Shanghai such as Gail Hershatter's 'The Gender of Memory'. The diaries were mostly in the form of letters from courtesans to a lover who had disappeared or taken their savings.
Of those who die from avoidable, poverty-related causes, nearly 10 million, according to UNICEF, are children under five. They die from diseases such as measles, diarrhea, and malaria that are easy and inexpensive to treat or prevent.
I don't think there's anybody better than Leonardo DiCaprio, and I've been saying that since before anyone knew who he was.
Who is the pinnacle of male-ness in America? Leonardo DiCaprio.
One who doesn't throw the dice can never expect to score a six.
Neoconservatism is not what people think it is. It is not a party or a group. Many people popularly seen as neocons - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld - are no such thing. Most neoconservatives reject the term. And those who accept it generally don't know each other and certainly don't act as the cabal that conspiracy-lovers imagine.
When I think about writers who use fiction as social commentary and to raise social awareness but who are also very popular, I think of Dickens.
I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows.
After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.
I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.
