Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not someone like Norma Desmond who's harking back to her younger days.
I didn't want to spend the rest of my life playing Norma Desmond over and over again.
As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.
What about that Dave Brubeck live album, with a version of 'Like Someone in Love' on it, and long sax solos by Paul Desmond? That's what got me hooked on jazz.
Many years ago, I had the pleasure of editing a book by Joan Crawford, who, like Norma Desmond, was still a big star; it was just the movies that had gotten smaller.
I'm crazy. I know I'm crazy 'cause Desmond Tutu told me, and he's very clever. He said, 'You must free yourself, be more of who you are. Be more crazy.' And I'm going to.
The most difficult story that I've ever been involved in breaking on any of my shows was 'The Constant' episode of 'Lost,' which was when Desmond was consciousness-traveling.
Right now I'm just thinking about school and trying to get those grades and keep them up! In case I become a Norma Desmond when I grow up, I can have something to fall back on!
I haven't watched anything I've been in since I've done it. I have never put in a movie at home that I've been in. Why? I don't know. I would feel like Norma Desmond. And I have a kid, so time is at a premium.
I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.
I think it's a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing.
I think there's a mythology that if you want to change the world, you have to be sainted, like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Ordinary people with lives that go up and down and around in circles can still contribute to change.
My first album after 'American Idol' I did with Desmond - we paid for it together, and we literally were together working on it every day for a year and half, just writing. We wrote in New York, Nashville, L.A., Sweden - we wrote with some other amazing songwriters like Diane Warren, too.
I think of myself as living so much outside borders or old categories that I choose as my leaders U2, the Dalai Lama, Vaclav Havel, Sigur Ros, Desmond Tutu, Barack Obama, and the girl next door. By definition, in short, my leaders are the ones who think in terms larger, and more intimate, than any country.
I got a poster from Columbia Records, and there's Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Ellington, Count Basie - everybody in that poster has died, I'm the only one left. And great players like Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, it's hard to believe they're gone because we were all so close. But I believe in the future and the tradition will go on.
