My tastes are eclectic.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't singing.

I earn and pay my own way as a great many women do today.

Trouble is part of your life - if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

When I was four or five, my father had a general store in Winchester and I don't think the farmers could ever leave on Saturday afternoon until I had been placed up on the counter to sing.

I'm not really a country singer, although I did make a couple albums and love its simple, straight-from-the-heart approach, but I have always sung a lot of jazz, show tunes, pop tunes, gospel and blues.

Emmys are wonderful and I'm thrilled to death that I have mine. But they're representative of a specific achievement, where this sort of thing is representative of how you've grown in your own industry.

I never wanted to set the world on fire. So I never had to burn any bridges behind me.

In country music the lyric is important and the melodies get a little more complex all the time, and you hear marvelous new singers who are interested in writing and interpreting a lyric and in all form of popular music.

My tastes are eclectic.

And I've never taken up a sport just because it was a social fad.

The best money advice ever given me was from my father. When I was a little girl, he told me, 'Don't spend anything unless you have to.'

Bing Crosby sings like all people think they sing in the shower.

Why should unmarried women be discriminated against - unmarried men are not.

Trouble is part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you enough chance to love you enough.

If you have more money than you need, you have to give it away. It's a duty. I get to choose whom to sponsor, and I like to give to the areas that I know something about.

Leave me a smile just warm enough to spend a million golden afternoons in.

You can find dozens of books about people taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I knew I had to do something different to cross Siberia. To drive and to talk with people along the way, that was how I wrote my book 'Great Plains'. I drove and camped in Siberia, but did not have a real program.

You get steely nerves playing poker.

The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs.

You know what I want to do? Wake up one weekend and not have to go anywhere and do nothing.

It seems that the only gun violence some leftists approve of is gun violence aimed at cops and other groups they see as oppressive or racist.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

If you're shooting a really serious, dramatic scene, personally I wouldn't want to look at the camera.

Life is a chemical reaction it only requires balancing

It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.

Dublin has given me a new definition for home Home is a place you dont want to leave. To be completely honest I think Ill leave a part of my heart here in Ireland.

I want things to be the best they can be. I want greatness.

Her death has had a huge effect on me. It felt like a big hole appeared on my left side - apparently your left side is your mother - which I thought could never be filled. Now I think what you have to do is fill it with yourself because your mother is part of you. I'm easing into that space, using it and being comforted by it.

Being a novelist is the adult version of a kid creating a make-believe world. But unlike a child, a writer of fiction has to come up with a structured story, one that has as much meaning for others as it has for her.

Being gay doesnt take your brain away or exclude me from having the same attributes as anyone else.

Tension is the cornerstone of any good story.

I don't get over the wonder of it, and 'The Last Samurai' was an extreme example of that. Every day when I went to the set, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Meditation provides a way of learning how to let go. As we sit, the self we've been trying to construct and make into a nice, neat package continues to unravel.

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

I've never seen myself as a fantasy writer - ever.

I've still kind of maintained a low profile but people still kind of recognize you and will come up to you, and that's taken a bit of getting used to.

I'll order anything that has the word 'fig' or 'crusted' in the menu description.

I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism.