Along with 'Free,' where I sing quite a bit, there are additional songs on 'Skin' where you can hear my voice in the background - lots of 'oohs' and 'aahs.' But more often than not, I use my vocals to prompt other rappers and singers to feel calmer, better, bolder.

I am critical of modernity giving science and technology a blank check as if it were the fountain of all truth. That is not true. And I think I may have introduced a word which has now caught on quite a bit, scientism. Science is good. It simply reports a discovery.

It's funny to think that when you get done with an acting job, you're considered unemployed. There are definitely times when those checks don't last forever. I went to college at a private school, and I racked up quite a bit of debt. I was very slow to pay them back.

I was champion, off and on, for quite a few years, and I never missed one title match from an injury. I got hurt lots of times, but the reality is you've got so much pinned on you and so much tied onto you, the company and your peers can't afford for you to get hurt.

Being a firearms officer is incredibly highly scrutinised now, and I think it is one of the things that puts off quite a lot of people. And if you think that you are more visible in that role as a woman, you might feel slightly less inclined to go into it than a man.

Let me spell it out: with the psychotic boss, nothing you do is ever quite right. They set traps, asking you to do things, and no matter how hard you think of accomplishing it in their way, it is wrong and you are to blame. This tends to instill a lot of fear in you.

The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the streets of Britain.

I had given a presentation on design and happiness for quite a long while at design conferences. I had found thinking about the topic helpful for my own practice, as it forced me to consider the fundamentals, and the feedback from the audience was always enthusiastic.

People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.

Most people with whom I talk, often quite educated, think the military is made up of knife-between-the-teeth grunts, uneducated robots without any kind of free will whatsoever - people who goose step to Republican philosophy and particularly the Bush cowboy mentality.

Having to re-articulate your values and, most importantly, your rights, is something that can be quite tiring and frustrating. However, I am meticulous and tenacious and will continue to do so, because I believe it's what's right. I believe it's what I should be doing.

I once went on a date where the girl drove and so couldn't drink. I was nervous, so drank quite a bit - it didn't end amazingly. As much as I love movies, I think cinema dates can be weird because you essentially sit next to each other in silence for a couple of hours.

You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of.

I always thought 'chick lit' meant third-person contemporary funny novels, dealing with issues of the day. I mean, it's not the ideal term; when I'm asked to describe what I do, I say I write romantic comedies, cause that's what I feel they are. But I'm quite pragmatic.

What's comfortable to me is familiarity. Comfort has nothing to do with the size of the garment. I do find something quite comfortable and charming in a too-narrow shoulder, a sleeve that's too short or too long, a pant that's too high or too low, hems that are trod on.

I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don't quite know how to explain it but it's there. These can't be the only notes in the world, there's got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys.

The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.

I actually think of myself as quite a shy person, although I know I give the impression of someone much more confident. I think what I do have is a capacity to listen to the other, even if the other is an opponent. That leads, in all senses of the word, to an engagement.

I was born in 1935, so I was quite young when the war started. I remember we were in Bath, and it was 1942. We went down into the cellar of our house, and when we came up, I remember seeing all the glass on the floor where all the windows had been shaken out by the bombs.

There is something sinister, something quite biographical about what I do - but that part is for me. It's my personal business. I think there is a lot of romance, melancholy. There's a sadness to it, but there's romance in sadness. I suppose I am a very melancholy person.

We often joke about men moaning about being ill, whether it's man flu or anything else. We want them to be silent and strong about these things. And that's quite dangerous when it comes to depression, because talking about it helps. People bottle it up until it's too late.

I think I'm much less self confident today. I actually went through a quite painful period because of that thinking that I was completely hopeless. But I think that's something that we all go through at various times of our lives and it was quite a sustained thing with me.

I think I am more determined than ever in my future plans, and I have quite made up my mind that nothing must be suffered to interfere with them. I intend to make such arrangements in town as will secure me a couple of hours daily (with very few exceptions) for my studies.

I love the sound of voices singing together, congregational singing, anything like gospel, or folk, or sea shanties. I spent quite a bit of time in choirs growing up, and in the world-touring music group, Anuna. It's a sound with very rich texture, voices singing together.

A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'

Quite a few of The Rolling Stones records have had a great honesty about them. In fact, I would put them side-by-side with a 'Treasury of Folk Music' collection, containing all the prison songs, the farm and road-gang songs that were recorded on the spot in the Deep South.

As her life became more unhappy, acting attracted Marie-Antoinette because it fulfilled unmet emotional needs. By all accounts, she was quite good in her little private theatricals. But her desire to be a heroine, both literally and figuratively, was shocking to the French.

It's quite ironic I suppose, it's that thing about being in a group when you all start out as friends and then invariably end up hating each other. So I just thought they needed telling really, in case they were labouring under the apprehension that they were still friends.

Quite naturally, the men who led in stirring up the revolt against Great Britain and in keeping the fighting temper of the Revolutionists at the proper heat were the boldest and most radical thinkers - men like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.

The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism - Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860 - it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason.

It's impossible to feel the creative juices flowing if you're always worried about the end result. I think really, really good work comes out of people being quite open, not stressed, really exploring, trying to be imaginative, without worrying too much about the end result.

I remember my first scene with Alan Rickman, and I was anxious because he is a slight 'method' actor; as soon as he is in his cloak, he walks and talks like Snape - it is quite terrifying. But I really wanted to talk to him because 'Robin Hood' was one of my favourite films.

There may be a long list of things to do, but really, there is just one thing on the list at any time. If you think of it like that, the whole world looks different and you can stay quite calm. Maybe everything will get done eventually and maybe not. You can always have hope.

We write in ways that, we generally hope, reflect real life, or at least look familiar to humans. And in life, recurring themes are a recurring theme. We never quite conquer a pet vice or a relationship pattern or a communication habit. We're haunted by our particular demons.

Although I'm only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

Colombia is so different to what I know, and every aspect of the country is different to England, and I loved it. I loved the culture and the food, and the coffee was amazing. The place that we were was stunning, and it really was quite an amazing experience to film out there.

And I love the twist. I love to fool you once, I love to fool you twice, and on the very last page, quite often - very last paragraph sometimes - I like to just play with your perception one more time in a way that makes everything that came before just a little bit different.

My dad was working abroad, in Iraq, and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him, in Baghdad, off and on. For the first ten years of my life, we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad, so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East.

The first modern novel was already a product, even an expression, of negative criticism: 'Don Quixote' contains a quite explicit critique of the chivalric romance and its insufficiency to account for the way real life feels when you get up in the morning in 17th-century Spain.

I love dressing up, but I do find the red carpet thing quite stressful. When I went to Venice Film Festival last month to promote 'Wuthering Heights,' I told my boyfriend beforehand 'I will be a nightmare, I will cry, I will be nervous.' Actually once I was there, it was fine.

I'm perfectly happy to eat organic food, but if I choose to pay more for it, I don't pat myself on the back ethically. Quite the reverse. I think I'm actually being quite greedy, because what I'm doing is essentially saying, 'I want more land to be devoted to growing my food.'

Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don't look at myself as a visual artist. I make music.

I was told by my grandfather who was a minister that we all were put here on earth to be of service to one another, and it is quite gratifying to know that if I am able to be of help to one that is not able to help themselves then I am fulfilling my obligation as a human being.

I quite often don't have breakfast, and I never have lunch. I find it helps not to wake my stomach up because if I had a good big breakfast, I would be ready for a snack at 11 and then a three-course lunch, then I'd be ready for tea, then a cocktail and then an enormous dinner.

I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to 'The Paris Review' - the highest publication I could think of - and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that.

Stock is everything in cooking, at least in French cooking. Without it, nothing can be done. If one's stock is good, what remains of the work is easy; if, on the other hand, it is bad or merely mediocre, it is quite hopeless to expect anything approaching a satisfactory result.

Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.

Until I was about 13, somehow I managed to assume that everyone reacted to everything just about as I did. I took it for granted that everyone shared my passion for overcast skies. It came as quite a shock when I discovered that there were actually people who preferred sunshine.

In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those things that we hear about writers.

If our extinction proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realization, the doers of the deed will likely be quite taken aback on realizing that they have actually destroyed the world. Therefore I suggest that if the Earth is destroyed, it will probably be by mistake.

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