To hear people saying, 'The music you are doing has really touched my life and it's moved me in a lot of ways. It's helped me get through some tough times.' That's the best compliment that you could get.
When Kehlani brought me out onstage, I really enjoyed that. I was just appreciative for her to think of me and bring me out woman to woman, introducing me to a whole new audience to me. It was just showing that I was appreciated for what I'm doing, that some people mess with me, and I'm all over the place.
Intellectually I touched God many times as truth and emotionally I touched God as love. I touched God as goodness. I touched God as kindness. It came to me that God is a creative force, a motivating power, an over-all intelligence, an ever-present, all pervading spirit - which binds everything in the universe together and gives life to everything. That brought God close. I could not be where God is not. You are within God. God is within you.
As a senior in high school with no money working several jobs, I was sent to a wonderful school on the East Coast by a wonderful Jewish man. I've never forgotten that. I've sent over 5,000 young people to school around the world in memory of him because he was so gracious to me.
When you make a decision, you don't have to be locked into it. One of the ways that you grow is by starting over. There are all kinds of really powerful things in that moment, which is what makes story work. Part of Laurie's Keller personality is this ability to revise, to come back and to look at things from a different angle. I don't want to tell stories too much out of school, but Laurie Keller is the only person who sent me a card on my birthday and then sent me a revision.
Erik Seidel ended up introducing me to some of the best players in the world, a few of whom also agreed to take me on to coach me. So I had access to the best poker minds in the world to help me study and figure things out.
The banks never sent me one chequebook. I'm very happy not to have ever touched one.
President Trump can't vote for me. The people that sent me up here sent me up here to repeal and replace, 100 percent, the Affordable Care Act.
Geek cred points for trying to stump me, but sorry, you'll have to do better than that. Would you like to try anime for a hundred?" When she looked blank, he sighed. "What took it down, anime, or the Jeopardy reference?
For children of my generation, anime was an escape from Japan's loser complex following World War II. Anime wasn't foreign. It was our own.
There's an awful video of me on YouTube.com, titled Dumas, her life is over! which was taped by some amateur during my first Olympic tryouts and has had quite a bit of traffic-like all videos of humiliated people do. This is where the exact moment that my life shattered around me was perfectly immortalized on film and can now be played and replayed, over and over, so the world can watch for their enjoyment.
My teacher sent me all over the world to talk about meditation - Europe, all over America, Canada. I would drive thousands of miles, travel, all at my own expense, to do this.
When you think about Walt [Disney]'s life, I don't know of anybody on Earth over the last hundred years who has touched as many people as he did. He's touched every nation on Earth.
For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.
My parents wouldn't have sent me out into the world with wool over my eyes. You have to be aware, or you'll be swallowed.
The idea of self-effacement, the idea that you feel so powerless that the only tiny morsel of power you have is over your own ability to deny yourself food - that to me is a very profound and sad methodology and indicator of how powerless a lot of people feel in this world. That they will turn that onto themselves until they are physically smaller. I think it's affected my worldview a lot - just being sensitive and empathetic towards the ways people want to be small. I don't wish smallness for anyone.