I kind of fell backwards into acting. I was studying to be a high school teacher. I look now and I understand completely or actually barely how much work it is to be a teacher. It's an incredible amount of work.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

The only consistent hobby I've had is studying Spanish and French because of some delusion of grandeur to work around the world. I love sports but usually I'm looking for the next job.

As an example one of the schools I have been studying is too small to compete effectively in most sports but participates with vigor each year in the state music contests.

Usually girls weren't encouraged to go to college and major in math and science. My high school calculus teacher Ms. Paz Jensen made math appealing and motivated me to continue studying it in college.

A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If as some evidence suggests exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life studying them could revolutionise biology medicine and biotechnology.

If I wasn't doing this I'd be in school studying political science or socioeconomic something. I love visiting different cultures and finding out how they make up a society.

I wanted to have a political career. I thought studying political science would be the best way to achieve it.

I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects but I think I was a pretty good student.

I love music videos I really do. I think it's kind of sad that it's a dying art form.

Dying is only one thing to be sad over... Living unhappily is something else.

Ooh it's too embarrassing to share my innermost romantic secrets - although I have written Danielle the odd poem. If anything they are more comedic than romantic. They used to be well-received but that was before she started studying Shakespeare at drama college. Now I feel so inept.

The writers I respect the most had an undying commitment to a vision.

I refuse to step inside the ring and fight like a gladiator against my own. I'm not playing that game. Any woman who has survived a year or more of making music has my undying respect.

Actually I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes.

If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children things that touch your soul.

When I finally got up to Industrial Light And Magic to work on the 'Star Wars' movies as a model-maker it felt like dying and going to heaven.