It was about 105 degrees in Chicago. And that's a time when everybody gets tired. I came into the clubhouse, and everybody was sitting around, and I said, 'Beautiful day. Let's play two!' And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. There were a couple of writers around, and they wrote that, and it stayed with me.

My big break was really Liz Meriwether saw me in a movie called 'Paper Heart' and really liked it, and then saw me in a movie called 'Ceremony' because she knew Max Winkler and said, 'I want you to be in 'No Strings Attached,' but you gotta audition for it.' From that it was easier for her to get me in 'New Girl.'

A lot of things I have turned down ended up being a big embarrassment. Like that script, 'The Beaver.' I thought that was one of the worst scripts I had ever read. But everyone said, 'Ooh it's on the Black List.' Yeah, well, good for it. They're a bunch of idiots. I saw the final film, and there were no surprises.

When I turned 40, I invited Johnny Cash to my party, even though I knew there was gonna be 200 people roasting a pig and wild as can be. He didn't come, but the next day, I got a bowl of chili he'd made and a note that said, 'John, I'd love to come to your party, but that would mean I would have to leave my house.'

A journalist in Toronto named Shannon Boodram saw my Facebook page and told me I was 'strikingly beautiful.' She shot a YouTube video of me, and it made a hit, grabbing thousands of views. She said the camera loved me and that I should be a model. I had never thought about modeling - it just hadn't seemed possible.

The six of us gathered at my house, and we walked to the polls. I'll never forget it. Not a Negro was on the streets, and when we got to the courthouse, the clerk said he wanted to talk with us. When we got into his office, some 15 or 20 armed white men surged in behind us - men I had grown up with, had played with.

I have friends that are very wealthy, and I said, do you get audited? They don't even know what I'm talking about. They have never been audited. Why am I audited every single year? And until the audit is completed, obviously, I wouldn't show anything. I will show it as soon as it's completed. I have nothing to hide.

I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.

My father told me about American democracy. And he said you have to be actively engaged in the political process to make our democracy work. So I've been doing that my entire life. Civil rights movement. The peace movement during the Vietnam conflict. The movement to get an apology and redress for Japanese-Americans.

If someone said, "Here, you have your pick, you can do either a musical, Moulin Rouge type of movie, where you sing and dance, or an action movie, or a Shakespearian or Elizabethan movie," I would definitely love to do a movie that was based on a musical, where I would get to sing, dance and act, all at the same time.

When I heard The Beatles, that was my turning point. They were like my mentors. You know, the funny thing about that, when I heard 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' at first I said these guys are like a flash in the pan. But the second album, I had to take all that back. John Lennon - one of the greatest writers in the world.

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'

I just kind of opened up and said, 'I feel like a rag doll. I have hair and makeup people coming to my house every day and putting me in new, uncomfortable, weird dresses and expensive shoes, and I just shut down and raise my arms up for them to get the dress on, and pout my lips when they need to put the lipstick on.'

Ralph Fiennes was a pivotal influence on me. He asked me, 'So what is it you want to do?' I very shyly, timidly admitted that I wanted to be an actor. He sighed, and he said, 'Lupita, only be an actor if you feel there is nothing else in the world you want to do - only do it if you feel you cannot live without acting.'

Over the years, there's been some cases where people did come up who said they were healed, but really they were not healed. I do believe it's possible for individuals to mentally convince themselves they are, but that does not deny the real healings. That doesn't dismiss the fact that a lot of people are really cured.

One of the issues that I have raised in that context is our transport system, road, rail and ports. We have raised this before, that the South African economy has grown at a rate that has overtaken the capacity of the transport system. And therefore, we have said that it is necessary to expand our capacity in the ports.

It has long been said the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. Automatic enrollment for insurance of 401k loans would add an additional certainty. Fewer Americans would suffer the unnecessary loss of retirement savings due to unanticipated and untimely misfortune in an already stressful time of need.

I saw Bob Arum out in America, I saw him walking through the lobby in the MGM Grand. I basically went over and said: 'You're running out of opponents for Crawford and I'm the guy to beat him. I'm here.' I saw Terence Crawford, he said he was ready for it, so everybody is on the same page. Everyone wants to make the fight.

When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things that are difficult to put into words. In the work, everything belongs to everything else - the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said.

'Boom' is my heart. The 'kack' is my soul. Apparently when I choreographed I didn't realize that I said 'boom-kack' 'boom-kack.' I had no idea I was doing it and then I realized that it's every time I felt like the fight in my soul - the boom and the kack - was like my heart. It was like the love of it - my heart and soul.

I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

Having realised that in cooking there was a vast field of study and development, I said to myself, 'Although I had not originally intended to enter this profession, since I am in it, I will work in such a fashion that I will rise above the ordinary, and I will do my best to raise again the prestige of the chef de cuisine.'

Evolution explains our biological evolution, but human beings are very unique creatures. As the Dobzhansky said, all animals are unique; humans are the uniquest. And that uniqueness of being human, language, art, culture, our dependency on culture for survival, comes from the combination of traditional biological evolution.

No one ever said learning was to be easy, but it's part of the process of evolving as a human being, and we all have to go through it. When I look back, I see that each difficult time brought an important lesson. And I prefer to look at it with gratitude because I wouldn't be who I am today if I haven't gone through it all.

My favorite actor was, is, Michael Keaton. Certainly growing up, in the movie 'Night Shift' he did something brand new that I hadn't seen before that we all steal from now. And then it was in 1987 he did the movie 'Clean and Sober' and 'Beetlejuice' in the same year, and that was when I said, 'Wow, that's what I want to do.'

J.K. Rowling said Bellatrix's role was going to be significant in the last one, when I showed some reluctance in playing a tiny bit part. Up front, they said, 'You're very significant in the last one.' But significant could mean a lot of things. That could just mean a significant plot point. Doesn't necessarily equal big part.

I remember, when I was 6 years old, we were having an event at school where different dolls were on display. I said that the tallest doll needed to be on the end, and my little friend said to me, 'Oh, you're just so bossy.' I remember thinking that wasn't a good thing. But I kept insisting the doll had to be on the end anyway.

Johnny Valentine's the one who said, 'I can't make them believe that wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'm real.' It would take him forever because he was just stinkingly boring for 30 minutes of the 40-minute match, but he would let people hit him as hard as they could, and he would hit people as hard as he could.

The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.'

My social philosophy may be said to be enshrined in three words: liberty, equality and fraternity. Let no one, however, say that I have borrowed by philosophy from the French Revolution. I have not. My philosophy has roots in religion and not in political science. I have derived them from the teachings of my Master, the Buddha.

We were at a kibbutz, and we were at a Shabbat service, and I opened up the prayer book, and on the first page, it said that the prayer book was in thanks to the sponsorship of this family in a temple in Kansas City. For me, it was a moment when I really kind of connected in a real serious way with my personal identity as a Jew.

We buy a bottle of water in the city, where clean water comes out in its taps. You know, back in 1965, if someone said to the average person, 'You know in thirty years you are going to buy water in plastic bottles and pay more for that water than for gasoline?' Everybody would look at you like you're completely out of your mind.

I remember someone once said there is a practical aspect to my designs, and I remember thinking, 'That doesn't sound so creative,' but that is actually the truth. There is a practicality to it. I don't design just to design. There is a reason and, hopefully, an interesting reason behind it - that is where my creativity comes in.

We were Orthodox Jews, but we really didn't deserve it. I mean, bacon - my father said, 'Don't put bacon in the house,' but we had bacon. We didn't keep kosher. And we observed which today would be Conservative Jews. But in those days, we belonged to an Orthodox temple. So we made out we were Orthodox Jews, but we really weren't.

I once met a man who was a billionaire, and I said to him: 'Are you a self-made man?' - and he turned around and said: 'No man is self-made;' and certainly, if you want to make films or get into television or even theatre, the amount of help that you need, the amount of people who need to give you a helping hand is extraordinary.

During my last voyage to America, I enjoyed the happiness of seeing that revolution completed, and, thinking of the one that would probably occur in France, I said in a speech to Congress, published everywhere except in the 'French Gazette,' 'May this revolution serve as a lesson to oppressors and as an example to the oppressed!'

Out of all my friends, I believe I'm the only kid whose dad made us work to cut rebars; we laid bricks in construction sites and did other real work every summer for minimum wage. Our dad said that it's important in the future that when we tell people to dig a hole, that you personally know how long it will take to dig that hole.

I went into a Beverly Hills shop to buy an attache case. They had 250 cases on their shelves. I asked an attractive saleswoman if they carried one made of belting leather. She said 'no.' That was the end of the conversation. She made no attempt to show me another case that would provide equal service. I didn't buy an attache case.

God probably shook his head and said 'Oh, my goodness' many times in dealing with my father. But what God saw in my father was that he was a rock, a foundation in a lot of ways - someone people could relate to who could shine strong and was not afraid to reveal himself. I think he was a great role model to many people in that way.

Some Nickelodeon executives were worried about backing an animated action show with a female lead character. Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls. During test screenings, though, boys said they didn't care that Korra was a girl. They just said she was awesome.

Let me tell you about the nap. It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man. And he said - I was maybe nine - he said, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off and put a blanket over you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right.

I remember being at Greenblatt's on Sunset, and some guy just walked straight up to me, and he had some bling on and whatever, and said something about a party down in Malibu and asked if I would jump in his car and go to the party. All I could think was, 'Who are you? I don't know you, and I don't care about how good your car is.'

We have stood up and said continuing growth in the Western world is unjust, inappropriate and potentially destabilising. Having said that, we understand why governments do it, so there is an onus on us to show there are other stories and to identify the institutional innovations you might need in order to arrive at this other place.

I've always said that the first season was the first act of my feature, so this is what I meant. I wanted the story of 'Mr. Robot' to be Elliot actually accomplishing his goal, setting the world into chaos. What would happen to society if something like this occurred where, basically, if the consumer-debt industry were to be erased?

I was asked by an NPR reporter once why don't I talk about race that often. I said, 'It's because I'm a neurosurgeon.' And she thought that was a strange response... I said, 'You see, when I take someone to the operating room, I'm actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn't make them who they are.'

Faith is the most important thing in the world to me. It's the greatest strength I've had. It's helped me get through the hard times. You're not going to win every one of your football games. I've always said I'm not going to make football my god. A lot of coaches put so much into coaching football games that they have nothing left.

I hold that establishing mixed schools will not harm the white race. I am their friend. I said in Mississippi, and I say here, and I say everywhere, that I would abandon the Republican party if it went into any measures of legislation really damaging to any portion of the white race, but it is not in the Republican party to do that.

I walked around feeling, in a sense, that people of color, we began at the bottom of a slave ship. We were enslaved; we picked cotton. There was Honest Abe, who wore a top hat and was taller than anyone and who said, 'Enough is enough; slavery must end.' And then, black people could stand up again. But after that, we didn't catch up.

I think what draws people into 'Supernatural' is that when all is said and done, and the ash from the various apocalypses settle, it's about the brothers. Even though there's cool fights in this and cool special effects, and there's superheroes... in the end, it is about family. Two families: the family by blood and family by choice.

I love women, but I feel like you can't trust some of them. Some of them are liars, you know? Like I was in the park and I met this girl, she was cute and she had a dog. And I went up to her, we started talking. She told me her dog's name. Then I said, 'Does he bite?' She said, 'No.' And I said, 'Oh yeah? Then how does he eat?' Liar.

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