When you're writing something and you know it's good, you get flushed, you can feel the blood coursing through your veins, you feel alive, all your nerve endings stand up, something just clicks.

There are any number of things that would be detrimental to your career. Everyone's really afraid.

I hate polite conversation. I hate it when people stand around and go, "Hi, how are you?" I hate words that don't have any reason or meaning. Also I hate it when people smoke in elevators and closed in places. It's just so rude.

Hollywood is about playing the game, and I can't think of any successful actresses who didn't play the game. There's a lot more renegades in the music business, from Patti Smith to Janis Joplin.

I'm liking the idea more and more of just standing up with a microphone and talking.

Everyone who knows me thinks I'm a bit of a work Nazi.

I go to Malawi twice a year. It's where two of my children were adopted from, and I have a lot of projects there that I go and check up on and children who I look after. It's sort of a commitment that I've made to this country and the hundreds of thousands of children there who have been orphaned by AIDS.