Faith is important to me. It's important to millions of Australians. It helps to shape who I am. It helps to shape my values. But it must never, never dictate my politics.
When I see an artist whose work I like at a party - I'm old now, so I can do this - I go right over and tell them how much I like their work. Instantly, I'm on their side. The act of saying it takes away the competition. The act of saying it makes me not hate them anymore, because they're good.
Music helps shape the way people think about the world and act in the world.
In many ways, writing is the act of saying 'I,' of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying, 'Listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.' It's an aggressive, even a hostile act.
I'm always in this shape, that shape, whatever shape you like the most. I am always in various stages of shapes. If the woman needs to be more soft I'll gain weight and then I'll lose weight for another film that I did where I wanted her to be more wiry. I enjoy using my body as something that helps me get to a character.
Educating girls prevents child marriage and early pregnancy and helps women get jobs, which boosts household incomes and economic growth. It gives girls a voice and helps them to shape their own futures.
Writing something down and processing it, sitting with a text and a story, editing and rewriting new drafts - that entire process helps clarify something for myself. Depending on the person, the act of trying to tell your story helps you understand yourself better, helps you come to terms with something that happened.
I also discovered Pilates when I got pregnant, as people kept saying it's a great way to stay in shape, and now I can't get enough - it's amazing. It helps with aches and pain and, even for non-pregnant people, it's a great way of getting those lean muscles.
If you want those around you to act in a more loving and conscious manner, act in a way that helps them to do so.
I think poetry involves heightened noticing or imagining as well as creating a certain made shape. On the other hand, that shape can be made just by pointing at something and saying, "That's a poem".
[On peanut M&Ms:] It is the eggness of them. A shell, chocolate placenta, proteiny peanut baby. Life shape, birth shape, cell shape, protoplasmic-ooze shape. A shape that calls straight through civilization to our reptilian brains.
Competing helps me to polish my shape.
The technology can help the artist work in a different way and the artist also helps define what the technology should be. They call for the tools that they want to be able to tell their story. I thought that was really exciting and interesting.
Early in school, they called me 'the artist.' When teachers wanted things painted, they called upon me, they called upon 'the artist.' I am not saying that I learned my name, animals can learn their names, I am saying that they learned it.
Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist's work.
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.