Quotes About Independence

I knew I didn't want to be stuck in Stoke Newington for the rest of my life, hanging about with idiots. That wasn't for me. I wanted to go out and have a look around.

I wanted to find a way of life that allowed me great freedom, not to be stuck. I went to a very traditional school, which prepared people for the army or for banking or for industry, and I wanted to be outside of that.

I travel a lot. I didn't want to be stuck sitting in my office managing the business.

I'm sort of stuck in adolescence in many ways, like most artists, and march to my own beat.

I could never understand the herd mentality. I have always fought to do things my way and have stuck to that.

I was never a good student. I had to be dragged into kindergarten. It was hard to sit and listen to somebody talk. I wanted to be out, educated by experience and adventure, and I didn't know how to express that.

My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a comedy writer, and she's at film school. I discouraged both of them early on from getting involved in Starbucks. I didn't think it would be fair; plus, they didn't have any interest anyway.

'Chocolat' was a sort of statement of my own childhood, recognizing I experienced something from the end of the colonial era and the beginning of independence as I was a child that really made me aware of things I never forgot - a sort of childhood that made me different when I was a student in France.

Finally, I was no longer a student and was making music for myself.

I've always adored my father's music, but ever since I'd started singing, whether it was while I was still a student at the University of Massachusetts or professionally, I avoided Dad's material.

I've been able to pay the bills. I've been able to pay off my student loans. I was a homeowner before anything happened in the larger public eye.

I don't regret not going to college. Students learn up to the age of 21, then stop. I'll always be learning - the things that really matter in life. How to sign on, how to get free food, how to be streetwise.

When schools produce students who learned to think on the left or on the right, they're not thinking for themselves.

At the Harvard Business School, I really felt I had gained the ability to resolve difficult issues. But I also felt that I wasn't in the mainstream with my fellow students. During job-hunting season, for example, everybody shaved their beards for interviews. I thought, 'This is crazy.' So I grew a beard.

As an undergrad, I studied engineering physics at the University of Oklahoma, and all my degrees are from engineering departments. My father wanted me to join him in the oil-field business in Oklahoma, but I wanted to be a scientist.

I haven't studied art and I haven't studied typography, but I've still gone out and done it.

I'd studied acting in New York when I left Pierre - that was the big thing that I did. I worked very hard at it, actually.

I studied a month in Costa Rica and loved it. I'm not scared to go abroad. I feel like I can figure things out and I know what to do.

I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.

Today's kids have a mind of their own, and they know how to exercise it. Even if I wanted to tell Sara or my son Ibrahim how to lead their lives - which I don't - they would not listen to me. Luckily, Sara chose to complete her studies before pursuing acting. She attended Columbia University and then devoted her attention to Bollywood.

In college, you become truly independent; your discipline is honed. It has to be there for your studies. It helped make me who I am, and it increased my determination to be the best I could be.

After my schooling in Meerut, I was sent to Allahabad for further studies to become an IAS officer. It was there that I got the freedom to do whatever I wanted to, and it was in Allahabad that I first did theatre.

I'm portable. I carry a laptop and a little recording studio on my back.

I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do.