I was watching the Nina Simone documentary alone in my room, and I said out loud to myself, 'Why do we not know that this woman is beauty? She is beauty! Why did no one tell me this growing up? Why was her name not next to 'beauty' in the dictionary?'

I loved being a redhead! I always wanted to try it. I was obsessed with Lucille Ball growing up. I really wanted to try it but I always thought that doing it would ruin my hair.

Keep in mind that diversity does not just mean black. It means all of it - age, weight, gender.

Career-wise, there are so many things where you don't get what you think you want. I've had to make space for, 'Do I let that debilitate me and make me feel bad about myself? And make me feel like I need to change myself in some way?' Because I think changing myself is very different from growing and learning.

People get so terrified that the government might take their guns away that they stockpile as much as they can afford. They've been led to believe that there will be an outright ban of guns, so they drink the NRA propaganda and spend their money on more weapons.

Science is a victim of its own reductive metaphors: 'Big Bang,' 'selfish gene' and so on. Richard Dawkins' selfish gene fitted with the Thatcherite politics of the time. It should actually be the 'altruistic gene,' but he'd never have sold as many books with a title like that.

I can't think of a single example of two mature democracies going to war with each other in the 20th century. It's where there was an absence of democracy and a breakdown of democracy that we finish up with these wars.

The idea that the law should punish what is rude; that government should protect our tender sensibilities from those who would - quite often with shallow motivations but sometimes with deeper and more serious complaints - challenge our national certainties and rituals, should alarm and anger us.