"I dabbled a little bit in the whole music thing but I've always thought about Bernie Taupin, who is Elton John's lyricist; Elton John is the great melody and song writer but Bernie Taupin is the one who writes all the lyrics. I don't write lyrics, and I never wanted to be in the music business if I was just going to be a puppet in it."

"There are many mediocre entertainers who don't aspire to much more than fame and glory. It's very easy to have them as your role models because there aren't as many greats. Go back, discover the greats, and take it from there."

"I make a really delicious eggplant and squash curry that's inspired by Vij of Vij's Restaurant, a great chef and restaurateur in Vancouver. I like to cook that dish because it's really simple, but the flavor is so pungent and intense that I feel like I'm a real chef whenever I create it."

"I was a big fan of John Cassavetes, his wife, Gena Rowlands, and that era of filmmaking which was about realism and which represented the antithesis of the dreamy escapism you found in musicals."

"I was taught from a young age that many people would treat me as a second-class citizen because I was African-American and because I was female."

"I went to an all-boys school and hated feeling like one of the crowd."

"Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a tremendous education as an artist and also an enormous knowledge of literarture."

"The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones."