It is very grand and sumptuous and awesome to look at but it was really about the characters for me.

It is very grand and sumptuous and awesome to look at but it was really about the characters for me.

She's lonely and wounded and very vulnerable and it really is a story about people at the heart of it all.

I feel like I've come out of this grown up, maybe because I live through the character vicariously and she grows up so much during the course of this story.

It wasn't my intention in going after this part but I suppose now I do. The adult roles are a lot meatier - you're not always just the daughter or the girlfriend or whatever.

Here we spent so much time together - eight months of our lives almost - and it was so great because we all got so close and that really made us not afraid to improve with each other.

Being yourself is one of the hardest things because it's scary. You always wonder whether you'll be accepted for who you really are. I decided to call my record 'Inside Out' because that's my motto about life. I don't think you ever succeed at trying to be anyone else but who you truly are.

Everyone messes up in relationships and has peaks and valleys in their personal lives. When I realized it wasn't the end of the world and I would keep on standing, I knew it was going to be OK.

Guys usually like a very natural look. I think it's bad idea to wear a strong lip on a first date - or for the first few dates. I'm always too nervous he'll kiss it off - if I'm lucky enough to get a kiss! I also think soft, sexy hair is important.

I don't really live my life in the media spotlight. People don't know that much really about me or what I think.

I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.

I hope that I'm sexy in a different kind of way than I think that a lot of girls are right now. I think a lot of girls in the public eye, especially musical artists, are just kind of objectified a little bit and wearing super-skimpy outfits and leaving nothing to the imagination.

I never walk into the studio and say, I'm going to write a song called... 'X' or called 'Slow Me Down.' I write a ton of lyrics, often the title is somewhere in those 10 pages of... I call it brain vomit. It's kind of like whatever comes out of my head and I'm unabashedly just writing it down.

I think we're all a lot more like our parents than we want to admit.

I'd say that my musical influences are anywhere from pop-rock electronica, new age and classical. But I think that specifically, bands - I love Jem, I love Sigur Ross, I love David Gray, I love Elliot Smith... a lot of different people. But I don't find lyrical inspiration from anybody.

I've never had my brows done - I tweeze them myself. I used to watch my mom pluck her brows, that's how I learned.

I've never had siblings, I didn't grow up in a big family; it was just me and my single mom. And hectic family dysfunction was actually something that I craved.

If I can't find a project that I'm really interested in, I'll just go back to college where I've been studying art history and French. I'm also going to study English and philosophy - the whole curriculum!

It's the best feeling when you wake up and it's warm and cozy, and you don't have to go to work.

Music is also a part of who I am so I'm thinking about recording an album.

Too many times you come across lyrics that sound like you've heard them before or you can't really relate to them. And I think that I write songs that sound fresh and sensual in kind of a layered, lush way. But I also think that they are real, and that's why I wanted to call the record 'Inside Out.'

I just really gravitate towards a nostalgia for a time when things were simpler. When beauty was more classical and glamorous.

I am not allowing myself to get carried away.

In France, in Europe, the young artists of any generation always act as grandsons of some great man - Poussin, for example, or Victor Hugo. They can't help it. Even if they don't believe in that, it gets in their system. And so when they come to produce something of their own, the tradition is nearly indestructible.

I feel that the majority of people should decide for themselves what kind of government they want.

Globalization means that business strategy and business ethics cannot be separated from each other.

Teens are passionate, questioning, curious, have a bit of the idealism I still cling to, and they're making decisions for the first time that can alter the course of their lives - and sometimes, the course of the world.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.

Whatever was the conduct of England, I am equally arraigned.

My cheeks explode when I smile. That's why I have to look so nonplussed.

Nothing would be more profitable to us than a right history of mankind.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

True, the sun and the wind inspire. But rain has an edge. Who, after all, dreams of dancing in dust? Or kissing in the bright sun?

To the newlyweds: May for better or worse be far better than worse.

I am against government by crony.

Time scares me: having enough time to do all the things that I want to do in life, just even in terms of forgetting about the business I'm in.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

I collect Hot Wheels. I collect glass. I collect coins. And I collect cards.

Good intentions are not an excuse for maladministration of this magnitude

If I were to talk to Lindsay Lohan, I'd encourage her to get the hell out of acting and into something soothing. Take up botany or something.

It's not at all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book. If I do that well, I feel, good tidings generally will follow and readers will stick with me.

The classic war movies of the post-Vietnam era have generally taken on grand, philosophical themes: the meaninglessness of war, the grinding down of man by the machine - the machine being war itself, represented by someone like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in 'Full Metal Jacket,' the sadistic marine who turns his boys into instruments of death.

Peace is one of the most precious gifts God has promised His children.

The body of a beautiful woman is not made for love; it is too exquisite.

My favorite computer of all time? The Apple II that got me started, of course.

The difficult part was to tell the world that I was finishing.