Idleness does drive me crazy but I'd rather read or write than do anything just to work. A kind of respect has been instilled in me for acting: I love it too much to ever have a bad relationship with it.

Poetry is life distilled.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

I'm intrigued by films that have a singular vision behind them. A lot of studio movies have ten writers by the time they're done. You have a movie testing 200 times making adjustments according to various people's opinions. It's difficult to have an undistilled vision.

My mom really instilled in me that I'm beautiful and I can do anything and I echo that now with my own girls.

My parents are wonderful and I'm really lucky - but my mom has always been almost exclusively a right-brained person. She goes completely on her feelings of things on her intuition and so she instilled that in my brothers and I.

I believe this with all my heart: The greatest coach of all time in my eyes is my mom. She's instilled in me a toughness and a perseverance and just a never-quit mentality and I thank her every day for providing me for what she sacrificed her life for.

The fact is that the learning process goes on and so long as the voices are not stilled and the singers go on singing some of it gets through.

My father is a chemist my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you and it never ends.

Being from Africa is the best thing that could have ever ever happened to me. I cannot see it any other way. All of my fundamental principles that were instilled in me in my home from my childhood are still with me.