I was living at home until about 27 and decided it was time to move out and move somewhere else, so that’s what I did. I wanted it to be the right thing to do. I didn’t want to buy something out of my price range; I didn’t want to be stupid with my money, so I decided to stay at home. Luckily, my mum and dad were amazing.
My sister Jennifer is an Emmy winning journalist and mother of three amazing girls. She brings an exceptional dedication to her job, her family, and her community, and has been a role model of mine for many, many years. I’m extremely proud of her.
When I jumped ship from Roush Racing to Hendrick Motorsports, I couldn’t believe the amount of personnel here that get along with each other. It’s pretty amazing that there are so many people under one roof, where Roush is more spread out and it feels so different.
When people chat to me about my childhood and getting into horses, they’re like, ‘Was it like the birds sang and the sun came out? Was it an amazing experience?’ I’m like, ‘No, it was rubbish. I was frightened. I was pretty unbalanced, and most ponies took advantage of me.’
I have an amazing stylist; she’s called Rebecca Corbin Murray… I go around to her living room, and it’s sort of exploding with dresses, and we go through them all, and she’s so good at picking things she knows I’ll like, and we work together. She’s taught me absolutely everything; she’s brilliant.
If I wasn’t an actress, I’d like to cook. I’m pretty obsessed by it. Rome was great in that sense, going to amazing cookery bookshops. No wonder their food is good because the quality and wide range of their produce is so good. It’s not fair, really.
My first novel, ‘The Lions of Lucerne,’ just poured out of me. It was an amazing feeling of accomplishment. My biggest fear and therefore my biggest obstacle to becoming an author had been, ‘What if I spend all that time and the book is no good?’
Most writer’s blocks come from people second-guessing to the point where they get discouraged, and they just quit. For me, if I write something and it’s not amazing, I don’t care because even if I feel like it might not be amazing, it could still be a number-one hit.
I’ve gotten to do some really amazing things, gone to some really amazing places, and just have some really unique experiences. And if I have one regret looking back it’s that – not a regret even, because I think that’s kind of labeling depression as something you can control – but I just wish I would have been able to enjoy it more fully.
I think smartphones are one of humanity’s most remarkable creations: computers are amazing enough, but a supercomputer you can carry in your pocket and communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere… it’s no wonder they’re troublingly addictive.
My thing with New York was that it felt so insular. When I went to L.A., everybody I knew was a cool, amazing musician. In New York, they’d be hunkered down trying to form a band. But in L.A., guys in bands were also playing with other artists, touring with other artists, and collaborating with other artists.
Housing Works is the coolest thrift store in the world, because not only are they the best thrift store – they’re not the most thrifty thrift store – but they have amazing stuff and all of their proceeds go directly to kids, mostly homeless kids, living with AIDS and HIV in New York, in the metropolitan area.
I like work, I like song writing, and I like the history of Atlantic Records. They’ve sat in the studio with so many artists – like Ray Charles, for example – and created something amazing. As a label, they seem to be great at growing bands rather than telling you how to do it.
Some people treat seeing me as if they just won a car on ‘The Price is Right.’ The feet get going, and the hands start flapping, and it’s really quite amazing. It’s a little scary: you can’t have more than two or three of them at the same time because someone might get hurt. But it’s great fun.
I don’t go to celebrity parties a lot. I don’t really enjoy them because I really like going for it in parties. And sometimes at celebrity parties, there is no dancing on tables because people… it can be a little judgmental at times. So I tend not to go unless it is Taylor Swift’s birthday party; then it’s amazing.
Imagine a ‘Mission: Impossible’-style spy or infiltration mission into the core, the very heart of the Empire’s military-industrial complex, the most secure facility in the Empire. You have a small band of experts with complementary skills who, together, are able to do these amazing things.
I want to break into the acting industry. It’s something I have a great deal of respect for; it’s a passion of mine. It’s so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that’s pretty cool.
I love to travel with my family or my two best friends because I completely trust them. I forced my two best friends into learning to scuba dive with me in Sri Lanka – it was amazing but also hideous because we were learning in very difficult seas.
It is an amazing feature in the French character that they will let themselves be led away so easily by bad counsels and yet return again so quickly. It is certain that as these people have, out of their misery, treated us so well, we are the more bound to work for their happiness.
I don’t think that American drivers going to NASCAR are taking the easy way out because as I said, the racing is amazing; it’s just that it’s easier to adapt to what you grow up with. American drivers grow up with NASCAR, they know NASCAR, and that’s where they want to go.
There’s so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it’s reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She’s been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there.
I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, ‘God, she loved life so much.’
It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.
Steve Jobs is considered an amazing genius and made billions of dollars. Sure, we overlook that he didn’t pay his share of taxes and didn’t believe in charity. But other than these occasional rumblings of dissent, he is pretty much held in high esteem.
Of course, you’ve got Lyoto Machida. He’s definitely a karate guy and he’s made a big presence in MMA. I would say look up Lyoto Machida. There are some other karate guys who are phenomenal at what they do at their karate game, the point fighting game, Raymond Daniels, who is an amazing point fighter and very flashy.
