Quotes

Characters are incredibly important, but I tend to build them around the plot during the outline stage. However, once I'm writing the manuscript, the characters I'm writing dictate how the plot unfolds.

In 'George Lopez', I played Veronica who's a bratty 18-year-old, and so I feel like it's much easier for me to play that because I feel like a late bloomer. It wasn't difficult or challenging at all because it's not like I haven't been a teenager.

It's so exciting to headline a film. It's not every day you see a Latina carrying a full-length feature.

Latinos are the fastest growing minority, and we're obviously not going anywhere. We're extremely loyal as a people, and I think Hollywood is starting to recognize that. It's very rare for a major studio to nationally distribute a film with Latino talent, not only in front of the camera, but also behind the camera.

I always promised myself if I ever got the chance to do a 'Flashdance'-type of movie, I would do my own dancing. I can say with pride that every single dance move in 'Go For It!' is my own dance move.

Education equals choices. I have been blessed with the choice to be anything I ever wanted to be, and I truly owe my happiness to my family and education.

I felt completely at home in Mexico - speaking Spanish to my cousins, running around Acapulco and stuffing my face with mole and homemade tortillas. Mexico opened my heart.

I have been a fan of Dexter since the pilot. Once I got the audition I just squealed, and you would have thought I just won 45 million dollars.

To me, acting is like tennis. You're only as good as the person you're playing with, so if you're playing with Michael C. Hall, what do you have to worry about?

When I was a kid, it wasn't very often that I could go to the movies and see an entire movie carried on the shoulders of someone who looked like me.

I'm dating a very high-maintenance career.

There's a lot of music that sounds like it's literally computer-generated, totally divorced from a guy sitting down at an instrument.

I have a 6-year-old, and his thing is to turn on Radio Disney in the car, and I get such an allergic reaction to listening to that music and the context into which it falls. I'm really working on him about that.

The knock-out punch is always the one you never see coming.

Listen, I'm out of this system, man, I'm out... I'm doing better than ever. I couldn't be more happy.

I didn't want to play these people any more songs and have them say that they weren't good enough. So my response was to just not be able to write anymore. I know that's not the healthiest of responses.

One of the things I've really gotten past in the last couple of years is the idea of being made uncomfortable by the way things appear, rather than how things are. Clearly in this business you have to contend with a lot of that.

It really doesn't matter to me what people say about me anymore.

It's more important for me to have a good record with good music and be part of a movie that's good and where the music is used in a really great way. That's the important thing. The other stuff you want to say about it, I don't care.

I wanted to try to write songs on the piano to get a different flavor.

Everybody kind of understands, Oh yeah you take drugs and it does something to your brain and then you can't stop. It's easier to describe that shame, that horrible feeling of not being able to control your own life.

Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.

For me, there's a fine line between telling a story that's fictional with lots of details and then removing yourself too much from it, so it's bloodless, a little too fictional.

I certainly understand that we're all trying to make a living, but I'm not thinking about that when I'm making it. And if that's your sole motivation, it's going to reflect that narcissistic greed, and you're going to hear it in the music.

You know what, the drummer is my manager. He's busy. And I'm busy. I don't need the dough, though. But having said that, there's a limit to how much bad music I wanna play. I did it when I was young, and some of the music was OK, but it wasn't great.