I believe in life's challenges and I always try to challenge myself.

I have always tried to make life interesting for myself by doing different roles that connect mainstream cinema with its offbeat counterpart.

I could go off into the wilderness and write fantasy novels for the rest of my life and probably be happy; but I always want to challenge myself.

I should say, I don't write about myself or my life. So for me, in fiction, it's always been about what I can dream up, that feels far away from me.

You're not always happy with things that go on in life on a daily basis. There's nothing I can do. You've got to deal with it and still take care of myself.

I feel like my whole life, I've had to prove myself to so many people because I'm young and because I'm a female; it's just constant. I'm always surprising people.

Whatever dramas are going on in my life, I always find that place inside my head where I see myself as the cleanest, tallest, strongest, wisest person that I can be.

I like to just think of myself as a normal person who just has a passion, has a goal and a dream and goes out and does it. And that's really how I've always lived my life.

I think there's always interest in how the other half live - I see myself as a down-to-earth Essex mum who just happens to be living this very glamorous life in Beverly Hills.

I've always kinda been a little outcast myself, a little oddball, doin' my thing, my own way. And it's been hard for me to, to be accepted, certainly in the early years of my life.

I don't think I need a significant other to be happy because I always like to find that for myself, but I think that it makes me a lot happier when I'm sharing my life with somebody.

I have a relatively sunny spirit, and I always had the expectation that my path through life would be relatively sunny, no matter what happened. I have never allowed myself to be bitter.

You can take what is handed to you and use it as an excuse to mess up. But I've always handled what was given to me by life. I consider myself lucky. I was never lied to. And I was loved.

I had always presumed that my first book would be published, but I never dreamt that I would write 15 bestsellers and have this wonderful life in America that I have entirely built for myself.

I have always weirdly seen myself as more of a character actor. I have never been suave. I could never see myself playing James Bond. I suppose I could fake it, but I am certainly not James Bond in real life.

I feel like anything I'm doing in life, I try to stay myself and be as honest and true as I can be, you know, and be a nice person. I've always been taught to be kind to people and have an open mind about life.

Lisa understands me. I'm very complex, but I have trouble opening up to people. I tend to keep things to myself. All my life, I've been kind of shy - opening up is always a challenge and Lisa can understand that.

I don't think of myself particularly as a Scottish director, but you are what you are because the first ten years of your life, and where you spend them, brand you. In that sense, I'll always be a Scottish director.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

I'm at the point where you look back on your life and reflect. I've always been an unbelievable critic of me. If we lost a game, I blamed myself every night. I'm very proud of some of the things I did as an athlete, as an executive.

I always prided myself on being apart from the ruling class. I think it's always important, not just in Washington but in life, to be able to able to balance your sense of belonging with what it's like to be someone who doesn't belong.

It was one of those early mid-life crises, really. I started asking myself, 'What is it that I want from my life?' This question kept haunting me: 'Do I want to be a lawyer who always wanted to be a writer, or do I actually want to be a writer?

I've always defined myself not as a cartoonist, but as an entrepreneur. That was true before I tried cartooning. I always imagined cartooning would be how I got my seed capital. I always thought my other businesses would be the less dominant part of my life.

I do not see myself, I never make plans, I never set goals, and I never do that kind of stuff; I don't like to futurize, I barely know what I will do tomorrow, and because there is a working plan here, I've never futurized because life always surprises me with things even better.

For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.

I have always loved to skate, and that is all I wanted to do. Having my whole, entire career taken away from me by somebody else - not losing it myself - I do have blame, but when somebody takes your whole, entire life away from you, and you don't know what to do, it's like you're lost.

All my life, I have been a positive thinker... I have always been able to survive by telling myself that no matter how bad things are, they will one day be better. And that out of every event - no matter how tragic - one can always find a way to survive and even, perhaps, to be a little bit happy.

All I ever wanted really, and continue to want out of life, is to give 100 percent to whatever I'm doing and to be committed to whatever I'm doing and then let the results speak for themselves. Also to never take myself or people for granted and always be thankful and grateful to the people who helped me.

I've always thrown myself into different kinds of experiences, sometimes into really bad things. But, you grow up. You become more of a woman and you know yourself. I think knowing yourself is a wonderful thing especially when you're in your 40s and you're kind of in your skin. Life is not so confusing anymore.

Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself.

There are many days when I want to throw my computer out the window, when I tell myself I'd be better off selling shoes at the mall. But I always keep at it, because I have to. Writing is completely part of who I am. Even if I never published another book, I would keep at it - because it feeds my life and makes it richer.

I always wanted to direct. I always saw myself as a director. I know that I've definitely found what I should be doing with my life. In my life, as far as my career goes, I always felt, as an actor, that it was something that would just be a temporary thing that would get me to what I wanted to do next. That's what my acting did.

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