Artists thrive off each other, and when you see other people doing cool stuff, it inspires you to do cool stuff.

What's funny about the slacker thing, people project an image of what they think a musician is: young, slack, unemployed - like a really romantic idea of a poet, writer or musician - which isn't really true a lot of the time. I don't reckon you would know anything about me if I wasn't moderately hard-working.

My great-grandmother lived to be 100 years old, so I got to know her. She always sent us birthday cards that had $2 bills inside - we kept them for good luck.

There is freedom in forgiveness, and it's not that hard to do once you get into the habit.

One of the best ways to deal with the peer pressure of the 'Fear of Missing Out' is to opt-out whenever possible.

I respect all women who came before me to blaze trails into the workplace for us.

The life my grandparents had was thoroughly American. They built a small ranch into a huge operation and fulfilled my great-grandparents' dreams. Theirs was... a simpler time of contentment and patriotism.

Millennials are the future of our country and of our political parties, and they shouldn't be unfairly characterized or labeled. They deserve to be heard.

I get a choice every time I have to open my mouth: that it can be with civility and dignity and grace - or not.

I was raised to believe that America was a force for good in the world and that it should take its leadership role seriously.

I've been in government and politics my entire career, and while I try to keep a level head and a reasonable tone in my commentary, even I can lose my head sometimes and let anger bubble over and burst out. It feels gross, looks ugly, and leaves a lasting mark.

It's one of my favorite seasons of the year: Back to School. As a kid, I loved fresh school supplies, new outfits, the change of seasons, and the chance to crack open a new textbook.

Good governance, safety, a chance to grow economically and professionally - those are important things.

My dad was a voracious news consumer. I remember just sitting with my family all the time. I would sit on his lap and read the paper with him. He would read it to me.

I loved the Sunday funnies, and then, as I got a little bit older, I think my dad recognized that it was important for children, and especially girls, to have that time with their dad so that they could help develop their confidence and their critical thinking skills.

One time, on Marine One, the president asked me my opinion. I had a flashback to being at the kitchen table with my dad. That dominant male figure set me up for being confident to express myself with precision and persuasion.

Whatever he does should be seen as working at the Presidency and if he goes to Colorado for Christmas, it should be for a minimum amount of time, the family tradition and family get-together aspect emphasized, and it be seen as a working vacation.

I think we need one recognized, respected public figure to make a tough, blunt statement on just what Reagan's record is and what he might do to the country, let alone the Republican Party before Christmas.

Presents don't really mean much to me. I don't want to sound mawkish, but - it was the realization that I have a great many people in my life who really love me, and who I really love.

I think that if you can convey a kind of a complexity, a mystery, a truth in stillness, that, to me, is really worth striving for, and I totally agree with Michael Fassbender in that less is more. If it's going on inside you, the camera will find it.

I'm a strong nonbeliever in the Christmas letter where you don't really read it because it's just full of kind of meaningless information. It doesn't really resonate to the person reading it, but it means so much to the person that wrote it.

I have a fear of labels. If someone labels me, I have to respond - do I acknowledge it, reject it, deny it, live up to it, and defy it? Labels can affect your ability to be yourself. If you're not careful, like I wasn't when I was young, that can take a toll on you. You find yourself conforming to everyone else's ideas of who you are.

Having done 'M. Butterfly,' I'm conscious of the choices women make with their clothes and makeup on screen.

Less than two weeks before my 34th birthday, I bought pots. Most people were amazed that I did not previously own pots, but that was before I explained that I had never used my oven, and used my stovetop for my dishrack.

I don't feel like I have to apologize for being a technophile, ever. Technology is awesome and lets me do so much. Nor do I feel like I have to apologize for loving my work.

I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money. I signed up for a writing class and snuck my first assignment on a yellow legal pad in a partner's office while he read through my memo.

It is a pet peeve of mine when people throw around arguments citing 'Fair Use' and yet fail to actually explain what a fair use argument actually is.

My weekends are oases of time and space, where I am able to draw a breath and dive into the stuff I couldn't get to that week - the great article I bookmarked, the friend whose emails I kept dropping, the blog post I'd meant to write on a subject that wasn't timely but was still important.

New York apartments are notoriously small, and my cute little studio is no exception - space is at a premium, which is one of the reasons that I only have a mini-fridge. Great for leftovers, cheese, and chilling Diet Coke.

Christmas is the season I use to clock failure in life. It stops time, as it were, on the year - where you are in it, where you are in your travail unto the grave.

If you catch me lying, it's probably because I'm about to surprise someone for their birthday, or hide away the specific details about a company getaway to a strange but amazing place.

Although social media is a relatively new form of communication, it has become the primary way retailers and customers are interfacing.

As a child, I did what any normal kid who grew up without any electricity would do - I spent countless hours working on a computer wired to my parents' car battery... and learned how to code. This natural passion for computers lead me into the Internet market during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Landing a million-dollar investment for your startup is exhilarating. But as big as that number sounds, it doesn't go far. Many startups just getting off the ground won't have a CFO to monitor finances. It doesn't take much for spending to spiral out of control.

Providing better computer science education in public schools to kids, and encouraging girls to participate, is the only way to rewrite stereotypes about tech and really break open the old-boys' club.

While social media skills were once a 'nice-to-have,' accreditation in the space is becoming a requirement for many of these job titles. Hiring managers and job seekers are realizing that printing stacks of resumes is turning passe, and social media is rising as the new way of generating real-time networking opportunities.

At the most basic level, prioritizing design also represents a practical consideration. It's far easier to design first and engineer later.

One of my favorite memories was one time Prince picked me up and said we were going to Michael Jordan's birthday party.

We are presented with a unique situation in the black community in that we have embraced the beauty of hip hop, the real rawness of it, the real fun of it, but we also have to address the damage it has done. We have to look at what it's done to our black girls, especially when it comes to domestic violence.

It used to upset me - now it makes me sad - to see people use patriotism and our troops as a pawn in their political argument. Because I know personally, growing up in a military family, the sacrifice that is made on a daily basis.

I'm proud of my hard work. Working hard won't always lead to the exact things we desire. There are many things I've wanted that I haven't always gotten. But, I have a great satisfaction in the blessings from my mother and father, who instilled a great work ethic in me both personally and professionally.

Women, teenagers, we have to really empower each other.

I love morning television because it's the most vulnerable time of day, when you are at your rawest, and if I have the ability to make viewers smile, that's a gift from God.

For my 16th birthday, my family took me to L'Auberge de L'Ill, which was family-run but had three Michelin stars. It was a revelation. After that meal, I realised this is what I want to do.

For me, the good food starts with good product.

Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.

As I approach my 88th birthday, it's become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other appurtenances, aren't quite what they used to be. The prospect of long flights to wherever in search of whatever are not quite as appealing.

I'm nearing the end of the road and still learning.

I think I've wanted to be an actress since the day I was born. I even asked my parents for an agent for my seventh birthday!

I am fourth-generation deaf, which means everyone in my immediate family is deaf. So I grew up always having 100 percent accessibility to language and communication, which was wonderful and something so many deaf people don't have.