After 'Heart Skips A Beat' hit No.1, I barely had a chance to celebrate 'cos it was straight over to the judges' houses for the 'Xtra Factor,' filming in Greece, L.A. and Spain.
When I pass a flowering zucchini plant in a garden, my heart skips a beat.
Whenever I see someone wasting water, my heart skips a beat.
I've only really had one period when I lost myself and felt like I was going to lose my career, and that was when I first began presenting 'X-Factor' spin-off 'The Xtra Factor' two years ago. I was worried if I did a rubbish job live on Saturday night TV that my music career was going to get affected and I would lose everything.
That's what stock-car racing is. You hit someone, or you get hit. That's something I had to learn. It's a key factor in why I'm so aggressive. I don't want to have to hit you. But if you're going to hit me, I'm going to hit you.
I have had people come to the site from all over the world. The US and Canada predominantly, but also Brazil and South Africa and Greece and Indonesia and Hong Kong and Ireland and Argentina and Spain and Israel and Australia.
I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I'll watch myself back on 'Xtra Factor' and want to do it again because of a few hiccups.
Kissing someone is pretty intimate, actually very intimate, and your heart always kind of skips a beat before you do that.
I've been starting in new places year after year after year. It's just like when I went to Greece or the Philippines. I love when people think I'm a new artist. It's a chance to start over.
Holding women to the idea of 'write what you know' subtly reinforces the status quo. Writing is a chance to celebrate who we are. But it's also a chance to celebrate who we could be.
I try to anticipate the ball well. That's something that's helped me since when I was a kid. Just learning to anticipate and read the game well. That's helped me. When I moved over to Spain and I was 15 I was playing with big guys who were 22 years to 28 years old and I was 15 so I couldn't beat them with power. I had to beat them with touch shots and variety and anticipation and all of those things. I learned a lot when I was over there.
Greece has been, in many ways, a partially dysfunctional society. For example, the wealthy barely pay taxes... to an extent, that's true elsewhere, including the United States, but it's been pretty extreme in Greece.
Following Greece's defeat at the hands of Turkey in 1897, Greece's fiscal house was entrusted to a Control Commission. During the 20th century, the drachma was one of the world's worst currencies. It recorded the world's sixth highest hyperinflation. In October 1944, Greece's monthly inflation rate hit 13,800%.
I think the judging process is full of integrity, compared to some other prizes around the world. The fact that they change the panel of judges every year keeps it from becoming corrupt. I think it's very difficult if you've got judges for life; obviously relationships are cultivated between judges and authors, and publishing houses.
In my life, I've had estates in Russia, houses in Spain, in Norway, in the deep south of America.
I'd just woken up from a nap, it was around 6:30 in the evening. I was eating some shrimp crackers at my desk. Then I get a call from an unknown number in Burbank, California and my heart immediately skips a beat because I know the Disney home office is in Burbank.
A lot of times guys have the tendency to try to kick it too hard or over-kick it. Just like a golf swing, the harder you try to hit it the less chance you have at it going straight.