I was a terrible loser growing up. I took it far too seriously. There were water works if I lost. I would go home and break it down in angry detail: How did I lose? What could I do next time?

I'm undefeated in Scrabble. I can figure out an opponent's strategy and mold mine to offset theirs. I play a couple times a week, and I'll often play a game on my bed by myself against myself, which I realize sounds completely mad.

I really do feel like Los Angeles is my home now and, as cliche as this sounds, I felt like I found myself here and I really know who I am now. There was a long period like I was drifting or floating through life, and now I feel like I have a definitive target - and future.

Ambition is a very good quality to have. Ambition and the competitive spirit go hand in hand.

Sometimes you go for weeks without writing successfully, and you don't feel like a writer anymore. When friends ask me how my week was or how I'm doing, I think back on it, and I've just been by myself. Like, I'm just a sketch.

My dad's side of the family had lots of artists and musicians. There's an emotional, quite sentimental quality to Slavic culture. It's very open, it loves art, it loves music, it loves literature. It's very warm, it's very up, it's very down. I would celebrate that.

The profusion of fonts is one more product of the digital revolution. Beginning in the mid-'80s and accelerating in the 1990s, type design weathered the sort of radical, technology-driven transformation that other creative industries, including music, publishing, and movies, now face.

I was lucky enough to be the lady that was asked to be Maria in the Sound Of Music, and that film was fortunate enough to be huge hit. The same with Mary Poppins. I got terribly lucky in that respect.