My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.

I don't care about sympathy. I care about playing a character who's understandable and clear.

I feel sympathy for the working class lad. I've always championed about ticket prices and try to equate that to people's salaries.

When you've been raised in care rap music isn't just about guns and sexism. They're talking about real things you can hang on to problems of identity that you have sympathy with. It's not just about the music with rap: when I was in care it meant a whole lot more than that.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

For me I don't feel it is a success in the career to be the pretty woman career success comes from being characters who tell us something about the truth.

I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.

Put paying your dues and all that puts so much into being a success. You have an understanding of what it's about being on your own for three or four years and living day to day on $3 or living in an apartment with no electricity.

If there's no fire there's no scream. If there's no scream then no one hears you and no one comes to help you in the first place. The depth of my struggle has definitely determined the height of my success. To be able to teach my kids not just about success but about the struggle that comes with it.

If there is any secret to my success I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel and therefore I think my readers care about them.

A sign now of success with a certain audience when you do a short comedy piece anywhere is that it gets on YouTube and gets around. It's always something you're thinking about unconsciously.

My store Wine Library outsells big national chains. How do you think we do it? It started with hustle. I always say that our success wasn't due to my hundreds of online videos about wine that went viral but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward making connections and building relationships.

The one thing that makes me feel super lucky about my financial success is that I have a housekeeper.

When people stand up and talk about the great success that the EU has been I'm not sure anybody saying it really believes it themselves anymore.

I think the measure of your success to a certain extent will be the amount of things written about you that aren't true.