Actually music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello which is a different experience you're flexing a different muscle but it's beautiful because it is music.

I find increasingly that the more extreme are the things going on in your life the more cultural reference points fail you. More mythical reference points actually help and you realise that's what myths are for. It's for human beings to process their experience in extremis.

As with real reading the ability to comprehend subtlety and complexity comes only with time and a lot of experience. If you don't adequately acquire those skills moving out into the real world of real people can actually become quite scary.

No matter how close to personal experience a story might be inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and actually whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself and your imagination and experience but actually in the end you're not playing yourself.

There's probably no experience more alienating than fame other than a terminal illness where you actually find yourself in a situation that nobody around you can relate to.

Sometimes I get so bold and I'm so confident about what I'm doing that I actually try to be more of a dork because it's a really liberating feeling to experience what it's like to not care.

Feminism is just about equality really and there's so much stuff attached to the word when it's actually so simple. I don't know why it's always so bogged down.

The people in Iraq lived essentially good lives. They had brilliant health and education systems. Saddam actually created an incredible infrastructure in a very difficult country but they were a Mafia family. If you said anything against that regime or that family you would be killed instantly.

And I'm very surprised that all this stuff actually worked out to where I could have a career in film gain the benefit of my education and be thankful that I was able to break into my craft as an actor.

The question is will we continue to fight what may be a rearguard action to defend universal literacy as a central goal of our education system or are we bold enough to see what's actually happening to our culture?

I made education the highest priority of my campaign - actually education and jobs - and the reason is a simple one: I think the future of America depends on it.

The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.

I grew up with not a lot of money and I definitely shopped at Goodwill. But even in my most unfortunate state I was really blessed compared to a lot of the rest of the world. I had a really great chance to follow my dreams and have them actually come true.

I actually build my dreams around the dancers I've got in my company.

So many of my dreams were to actually be able to make a living of what I did as a hobby.

I have shared my whole life. My private and my show business life. It helps me actually to feel my songs and to go on with my dreams.