There was a period of time when I first moved to Nashville, like the first couple of years, that I was just simply lost. I didn't know who I was; I didn't know really what I was doing here. I was meant to be a singer, but I just felt lost. That's when I went on the search for my birth family.
There are always fights in a band. People get together for these reunion shows after 20 years, and they play a couple shows and break up again.
There is a beautiful expression in Nicaragua: "struggle is the highest form of song". I love that. We are in the struggle. It's like a river. Once you step into it you become the river. It's not, you go out and click on a couple of charities that you believe in, march in the Women's March, and you're done. Struggle becomes your life, transforming a paradigm that is based on domination into a paradigm of co-operation. Fighting for the liberation of women, of people of color, of indigenous people, of lgbtq communities. Fighting to protect immigrants and assuring the safety of refugees.
What is so powerful here is that we have the first federal appellate court and it's a case coming out of Utah affirming in the strongest, clearest, boldest terms that the Constitution guarantees the freedom to marry and equal protection for all Americans and all means all, including gay couples.
I think there's tremendous significance and opportunity in Americans seeing legally married gay couples treated with respect in our nation's capital.
I don't have any ambitions as an actor. I felt very uncomfortable doing it. The first take every day I'd open my mouth and no words would come out. I'd do a couple of takes and eventually I could run the lines.
As it happens, I have personally been something of an enthusiast for the London Olympic games, mainly on the grounds a) that a bit of wasteland will be made nice and b) that it tends to make everybody happy that their country should be the centre of world attention for a couple of weeks in their life.
I didnt write Snow White for any class, but I got bitten by the screenwriting bug and wrote a couple of scripts in my spare time instead of going to keg parties or something.
It is problems that we faced for 30 years and we had to solve them in a couple of years only and the solution really pushed us and the economy couldn't handle it. We had the greatest depression. It wasn't easy and I think we expected the results. But the other thing is we have to try to create the plan B and get us out of this crisis as soon as possible.
It is very difficult for any couple who are married if both people are ambitious. I don't know if it's just too hard to be married to a woman that wants to be a movie star.
If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.
Many couples have never had a conversation about sexuality and sexual boundaries. The presence or lack of sex, the quality of it, the satisfaction and dissatisfaction, the unmet needs. An affair upsets the status quo by not only bringing the subject of sexuality to the forefront but every other aspect of their relationship as well. An affair yields conversation that should have happened in the beginning, but that people were afraid to have because, well, what would that mean about their relationship?
My music teacher was like, "Ester, you need to pay attention in class." I'm like, "No miss lady, 'cause I can sing." I didn't want anybody to change the way I sung. I learned by gospel CDs and by watching my momma sing; I didn't need this teacher to tell me. I wish I had, because then I would have learned how to play the damn piano or something. I would have a couple of more things under my belt if I wasn't so hard-headed.
Lots of really interesting people move to U.S and decide to work here, because of this whole attitude and openness. I'm absolutely convinced that this is just the beginning. In a couple decades we will see an even more dramatic change.
My fourth mother, my godmother, she passed away a couple years ago - her name was Gwen. She was the theater director over at the gym where I grew up and learned about all those awesome things I told you about already. She was the one who taught me terms like "upstage" and "downstage," all those technical things about the art of what I do - how to breathe what I see, how to move. They were all her tactics, not anything learned or given to me through a theory, but rather by her natural abilities.
Michelle is 14. Give her a couple of years to get stronger. I mean, she can play on this tour. If she keeps working, keeps doing the right things, there's no reason why she shouldn't be out here.
I take things on a day to day basis when it gets really hectic. But I do think long term and I'm looking forward to the next couple of years when I do start producing my own films with my production company and playing some characters that are older and that's really exciting to me.
I had a couple of decent laughs on Townies, but for the most part, delivering a joke that you just know is not funny is hard.
I think they [TV productions] were just kind of drying up. I'd done a couple of episodes, but nothing was happening. So I went to Vancouver to visit a buddy and see what was going on, and that year was crazy. Vancouver was on fire at that point. It was all these Stephen J. Cannell productions - The Commish being one of them - and in one I was a bartender, and I think I had five lines.
I think I deliberately sold out a couple of times. I picked the songs that I thought would do well in the marketplace, even though I didn't really love the song.
There are so many numerical financial flaws in ObamaCare. Young people realize I'll take the penalty. I'll deal with whatever it takes for the next couple of years. Maybe a couple years down the road, they will start to pay.
What I call an establishment or insiders, is that for a long time, they haven't fought to win. They haven't - they have run to win. Marco Rubio is literally telling voters to vote for another candidate that he is competing against in Ohio, just to stop Donald Trump. Couple of thoughts, what of his donors has to say about that?
I think I wasted a lot of my youth, falling for girls who were a couple of years older than me.
Reducing your life down to three pairs of jeans, two skirts, a couple of shirts, and a few pairs of shoes was so nice for me. I really loved living in this tiny room where I didnt have space for anything. It sounds really lame, but it made me feel a lot more free, because I just didnt have as many choices.
I've had a couple of pinch-me moments.
