Quotes About Perspective

All birthdays are good. You're getting closer to death. You're getting older. You can smile and laugh at it. It doesn't have to be bad.

Given the choice, the majority of children wouldn't go to school at all. The whole thing's ghastly.

I'm from Long Beach - not the best area in the world - and I had a lot of ghetto friends growing up.

It's okay for the President to start a war in Iraq, but it's not okay for me to talk about what I see around me in the ghetto.

Earlier I used to be scared of ghosts. Now, after having done so many paei films, I start thinking to myself 'Naaney Pei.'

Once I'm already in my room, I still have to open a door to get into my bed. It's like a giant box. It's like the boy in a bubble.

I was convinced I had a giant brain tumour. I thought, 'I don't believe this. It's like a bad episode of Brookside.' That's when I knew I didn't want to die. When the chips were down I thought, 'It's not my time yet.' I really wanted to live and be happy.

I've tried not to treat Shakespeare as a marble giant.

I know I'm small. But I don't feel small sometimes. I feel like a giant sometimes.

I believe we all must face the fact of death. It is both gift and curse.

I'm one of those people that will say, 'My cancer was a gift.'

Nobody has ever gifted me anything.

It sounds so early - retiring at 28. But I don't feel it's that early for me. If you're blessed enough and you're gifted and you're lucky enough, and you've got a fortunate career, then you can take that step back. I'm just happy that I did it.

I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari.

I think one of my better gifts as a writer is empathy.

I feel like everybody's on the same level. Nobody's done anything more important than any other. People have gifts in other areas. You weren't blessed with them; they were blessed with them.

I can't remember a 'best gig,' and my brain doesn't work in absolute terms like that.

I giggle when I put myself down. It's just funny to me.

It's a good giggle to look back at yourself in your 20s. You thought you were so fierce and fabulous, and it's just embarrassing.

You don't see a lot of difference between the Gin Blossoms and the Byrds.

It's difficult to explain a giraffe to a Bolivian who lives on the Altiplano. But when they see one, I think they'll like it.

I think there's always a way to bring something, even if it is just the girlfriend role, as long as you're playing it with an idea of who that person is on their own, away from the male character.

I just wanted to write about stuff that was happening in real life, and that's not just love songs about your girlfriend.

There's so many R&B songs where guys are talking about a clingy girl, like, 'I don't want a girlfriend, and this girl's so clingy, and blah blah blah.' But I'm a woman, and I've been in situations that have been the reverse of that, so I wanted to tell that story.