Quotes about Personal Growth

It's interesting when you've been a partner with someone for so long. So now to sing solo and starting all over again I am learning that I am more bodacious than I thought. I don't know where it's coming from but I am glad.

I grew up in the inner city of Chicago, and then I moved to Robbins, and it kind of raised me. When I was in college, I actually had them change the starting lineup to say 'from Robbins, Illinois' instead of 'Chicago, Illinois.'

I don't really like scary movies. I mean, I didn't as a kid, but I think I got a bit better now. I've been easing myself into it, starting off with the less spooky ones.

But a year before that, I was starting to drink beer on the set of the film Lucas (1986).

Keep in my mind my dad didn't become a huge, huge mega actor until I was halfway through high school - so right around the time he's going through his big renaissance is right when I'm starting to do my high school revolting.

Well, when I moved to England I was making a lot of personal adjustments because I was getting married and starting a family, that sort of thing.

People are starting to see that now and I've learnt more from those 10 rounds than I have in my previous 10 fights.

When I first met my husband, he had a very good job - company car, pension plan, grudging respect from his staff - the lot. I, on the other hand, was badly paid and devoid of ambition. Then I had a couple of books published and confounded all expectations by starting to earn more than he did.

The older I get, the more I'm starting to believe in myself. I'm beginning to think of roles that I could do that I would not have allowed myself to think of before, saying: 'That's not for me, that's for the big guns.'

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

I like any story that starts one place and really takes a huge journey to a whole new place; that people in their life want to take that journey. They want to be able to find things in their life that aren't working and work through them to a new place of change.

Getting the job you want always starts with excelling at the one you have.

It's like the journey of a police official, who starts from a low rank and goes on to have a high rank. After doing Punjabi films, even I plan on joining Bollywood as a lead actor.

There's a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him - or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn't have anything to do with his ego or his desire to 'be a good writer.'

You can learn a lot from criticism if you can take what's constructive out of it. If you read a review that starts with, 'This person is an idiot; who do they think they are?', you're not going to learn anything from that.

I can't sculpt. But if I were a sculptor, as you start to get something that actually looks like what you want, then it starts to be fun. That's the way I find writing.

I went to school for me - I didn't do it to make any sort of statement. So the very first year I was in school, I wasn't there under my own name. It was very incognito.

As a Southerner and as a Mormon you approach life in this aspirational way: 'I will rise above my station.'

I think I've matured to a great extent. I think that I want different things now. That it's not about the celebrity status that you receive because you're doing the next hot movie. It's about doing good work.

When you reach a level of status - and making it to college is an accomplishment in itself - you are trying to define who you are.

If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken.

The secret to a long marriage is to stay gone.

I try to stay away from all negativity.

My parents separated when I was young, and as a result, my father had to learn how to braid our hair on the nights my sisters and I would stay with him. We would arrive to school the next morning with these incredibly endearing lopsided braids he had fashioned. This may have expedited the process of my learning how to braid my own hair.