Quotes

I've lived a real charmed life. I'm just one of those knuckleheads who literally can't remember a season of his life that he didn't enjoy. I was a happy kid.

Whenever you're at a poker table - and you're betting all of your chips - you're worried, you're scared. Is it the right play? Have I thought through all the angles? That's what stinks about life and business in general. If I had to calculate 100% certainty on every deal I did, I literally would do zero deals.

As much as I love Twitter, Twitter feuds aren't going to work. Actually connecting requires true face-to-face time. I believe with all my heart that it's only after working side by side with another person that you earn the right to speak into that person's life.

I'd like to be out in the city every day, listening to what people are saying and asking about what they need. I'd like to inspire others by doing as much as I can to help people who are trying to make a better life for themselves and others.

I was a lifeguard, camp counselor, the president of the YMCA Leaders Corps. I also took piano lessons. I was a dancer.

Telling my story has not been easy for me. I've had to dredge up memories I would have rather forgotten. The lonely, anxiety-ridden months I avoided others, attempting to hide from interrogations about my social life.

My life was very compartmentalized. I went to a school that was all white, and then I went home and to my black family.

I have the advantage of many perspectives as someone who has lived in different kinds of communities: as a woman, as someone who previously identified as a lesbian, as someone who is a person of color. I've had a lot of life, so that informs what I do.

You have to be passionate about things in your life.

You have to have the lows in your life so you can deal with them.

Jerome Robbins, to me, is the genius of a lifetime.

Why not travel, why not see the rest of the world, why not experience life? It's beautiful! Phenomenal!

A kshatriya woman's highest purpose in life is to support the warriors in her life: her father, brother, husband and sons.

I feel I can express the nuances of the Bengali lifestyle and ways of thinking better than other cultures.

I came into Chicago in winter - I'd never been so cold in my life! I was very homesick, and a poor student at that time. America seemed so different and so filled with amazing things - and almost all of them were out of my reach.

I grew up in Kolkata in a traditional family. We had friends who lived in mansions just like the one in 'Oleander Girl.' Growing up, I was fascinated by the old house and the old Bengal lifestyle.

I was very fortunate that all my holidays I'd spend with my grandfather, experiencing a much more traditional way of life and listening to these wonderful stories, which I now feel are such an important part of Indian thinking.

As I remember my grandfather and those Christmas mornings he gave for a little girl's pleasure, I know that often a big life starts with doing small things.

In Western dream interpretation, it's often connected to psychotherapy and looking at the personality and what's going on in your life. In Eastern dream telling, many times there's this idea of a special gift. And without this gift, you could study and study, but you'd never really become an effective dream teller.

I was already devouring literature and I was the ripe old age of 15 when I decided to be an actor. I just thought plays were the most fantastic way of expressing life. I thought I'd discovered Shakespeare - 'hey, there's a new guy in town, don't know if anyone's read him.' I was just excited about the whole thing, from day one.

I don't tend to offer up a critique unless I have a clearly formulated alternative, because there's nothing worse than people on a set or any kind of artistic life who critique something but who don't have anything to offer.

As a child, I was just never that interested in the lives of my favourite actors, like Cary Grant. I do wonder whether knowing too much about someone's personal life interrupts an audience's ability to suspend disbelief, to really invest in the characters. My preference would always be that people engage with the work.

It's a weird thing when you spend your life trying to find these great scripts and great parts. You are reading scripts, you are traveling the world, you are hassling your agent. You are trying to find that script.

I enjoyed being in California for a while. But that's the thing about London: you can't really shake it. I've always had the impression when I was in L.A. for long periods of time that simultaneously my life was happening somewhere else, and I'm missing it.

Since I started acting, I always or often find work takes precedence with me. And that is not necessarily a great rule for life.