Sort of what you do in drama school when asked to play something way out of your reach. Anyway, we used to laugh a lot about that. I used to say I'm not going to act old, Penelope. I'll just be myself.
I never really fit in growing up. I got made fun of a lot of the time in high school. People never liked me, and I was always the new kid.
When Kate was born, she was born into a world of joy and happiness and confidence. The difference between the children is night and day. She's happy, she's thriving, she's full of self-confidence. I tell her she's beautiful every day before I send her off to school.
I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut.
My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around.
I thought about going to NYU film school - that was this ideal to me. But I didn't make any kind of grades in high school.
I liked to think I had written 'scripts' when I was in high school, but looking back at them, they were about thirty pages of wannabe-Mamet dialogue with a staple through them.
I grew up going to school and high school and then shooting a movie for a few months. It's an odd way to grow up and is kind of forced maturity.
Repeal the entire Banking Act of 1933, and Austrian School economists will cheer, especially if the current system were replaced by a 100%-reserve competitive banking with no central bank. That banking reform would give us a sound money system, meaning no more business cycle, bailouts, or inflation.
At a certain point I became really frustrated with modeling, like, why do I have to go home after school and get dressed up and put makeup on my face, and then go to a photographer's studio where there's 15 other girls with their books and have to prove myself? A lot of people don't think of it that way, but modeling's a hard job, physically and emotionally.
We should figure out how to do this so that some parents don't feel disenfranchised, angry and upset. It says a lot about the state of where we are in the city, the role of parents and the reality of small school and combining schools.
Summer camp was a place where I felt like myself that wasn't like school. There were no grades, we got to try lots of new things, and I started to play guitar at camp. It was a place for acceptance and learning to be a part of a community, but also learning to be yourself. I want that for all kids, but some kids don't have the opportunity to go to camp. I want to help.
Sometimes on the way to your dream you get lost and find a better one. It is okay to change your mind. If you thought you always wanted to be a doctor only to discover after medical school that what you really wanted to do was open a bakery--open a bakery. Life is too short not to follow your heart.
I always believed I was an ugly duckling in a family of swans, you know? I was such a black sheep, and it was the same way in high school... I was just kind of that awkward theater kid with a bunch of athletes... it was very Glee.
My feeling about school was that it interfered with my reading.
I've never done acid, finding it hard to go willingly to a place that could be frightening, hellish, and totally beyond my control. A place much like high school.
I learned my "facts of life" on toilet walls. I'd walk up in school bathrooms and there would be crude drawings and figures engaged in sex. That's how I learned.
I thought I wanted to be a brain surgeon until I realized all the schooling it required. I didn't like school very much so I had to come up with something else.
Persistence is important in every endeavor. Whether it's finishing your homework, completing school, working late to finish a project, or "finishing the drill" in sports, winners persist to the point of sacrifice in order to achieve their goals.
I hadn't really thought about going to college. Nobody in my family went away to school. The other piece of that was I didn't see anybody else in my hometown going to college to give me some kind of influence or something like that you might want to think about. I didn't see any of that. Therefore I thought it was never there. What happened was that my high school coach intervened. Had he not intervened to the measure he intervened, I probably wouldn't have gone.
I had my schooling right there in the Cotton Club.
I was in choir in school. I kind of just did it. I already knew I wanted to sing. My music program in my school wasn't really great - people didn't really want to be part of the choir, they didn't want to do the plays and stuff like that. It definitely wasn't the cool thing to do.
One time, the homie Venus[-X] read me; we were on the phone and she was like, "Girl, you keep wearing jeans and t-shirts at your shows, but the music doesn't give that." I was like, "You're right, I need to be the person that I am at school, making dance and choreography. I should think about the whole performance." That's when I put the 1 in my name and started dressing for the occasion.
I know a lot of people who have weird specialties that are not taught in schools; they're things that you learn in life.
I went to film school, so I certainly know how to make things quickly and cheaply. But at the same time, I have the experience of working with Steve Starkey for three years. I watched him produce some gigantic movies.