When I was fourteen, Mom and Dad sent me to St. Joseph High School, the Catholic school up the hill from our place, housed in a 1950s-era tan brick building sometimes confused for a light industrial structure due to the surprisingly high smokestack of its old incinerator.
I think my best songs come from me sitting at a piano, bashing my head against a brick wall for hours and hours on end to get one good melody.
Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised.
If I dream that I'm directing, it's not a film, it's like a commercial for cotton candy, and I've got four feet of cotton candy all around me that I've got to break through, like a brick wall or a fortress.
I hit a brick wall one day, and I spent a lot of time by myself learning about me and who I am and what I want and don't want.
I remember walking onstage in the first performance, and something hit me like a brick wall, and I just knew at that moment that this is something I had to do for the rest of my life, and I've never looked back.
I was really close to my father since I was young. He always told me that I had to work in order to become a man, so I had to stay with him when my mother left. He always took me to work to help him as a bricklayer. I was just a kid, so I did what I could do to help him.
The only other thing that interested me as a kid was being a bricklayer. So if I hadn't become an actress, I would probably be a bricklayer.
Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.
I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.
They been callin up here, asking when I am gonna get out. When I hit bricks, it all belongs to me.
The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.
I learned how to cover race riots by telephone. They didn't pay me enough at my first newspaper job to venture onto the grounds of South Boston High School when bricks were being thrown. Instead, I would telephone the headmaster and ask him to relay to me the number of broken chairs in the cafeteria each day.
There are a lot of historical lofts in Houston, and it's amazing for me that a lot of them were built in the 1920s. I love the exposed bricks and the very industrial stuff.
It's hard to juggle being a businessperson with being a creative person. You have to organize yourself - PR needs me for PR, and the licensing division needs me for licensing, the bridal people need me for bridal.
My father made bridal dresses, which he sold wholesale, and always wanted me to join him. He looked upon what I did as precarious and frivolous - except that he loved it when my name was in the papers.
Since I got into the movies, 'Running Scared,' that did $40 million. 'Princess Bride,' I got good reviews for the character Miracle Max. 'Memories of Me' didn't do well. 'Throw Mama from the Train' did $70 million. 'Harry and Sally' did 95 or 96. 'City Slickers' did $120 million.
My daughter recommended Chris O'Dowd to me after seeing him in 'Bridesmaids,' so I watched that and his sitcom, 'The IT Crowd.' When I was over in London, we met up, and I knew immediately he was the right person.
I'm a 'Bridesmaids' type of girl. I love silliness. That's who I am at heart, and I know I can do it. If my career path takes me elsewhere, that's great. But comedy is my forte.
If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was 'satisfactory,' I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?
