Sure I suffered a lot. But it's not like the end of the world and it's not who I am. I lead quite a pleasant life and I'm able to divorce a perceived reality from my actual experience of life.

Yes I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience especially for my brain surgeon who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.

I've seen people with a tremendous amount of educational background in the field not turn out to be terribly good actors and I've seen people with no education in the field turn out to be people that I admire quite a bit.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity and there really was no judgment.

I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it's too late by college.

Since my education I've done quite untraditional things. There are very few Etonians who went to Rada. And far fewer Etonians - certainly when I was there - went to Cambridge. I don't know whether it's the same now. Most people I knew went to Oxford because it seemed more of an easy bridge.

For every successful actor or actress there are countless numbers who don't make it. The name of the game is rejection. You go to an audition and you're told you're too tall or you're too Irish or your nose is not quite right. You're rejected for your education you're rejected for this or that and it's really tough.

I worry whether it's not really the best way to live one's life - trying to fulfill the dreams you had as a child. Maybe it's quite a backwards approach.

Right now I have some big dreams. But at the same time if I get annoyed and harassed by the media I'll just quit. I don't care. We're set for life. I have quite a temper.

I think I usually have quite ordinary dreams. Sometimes my dreams take me to other dimensions. I can travel in my mind especially when I'm dreaming I focus my mind on what I want to dream. If I want to fly I focus on flying.

The buildings that I build very often have a dreamlike reality. I don't mean by that they have a fantasy quality at all in fact quite the reverse. They contain in some degree the ingredients that give dreams their power... stuff that's very close to us.

I've had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I've often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

Though I'm vegan and advocate that others eat a plant-based diet I know that many people aren't quite ready to take that step in whole.

The USDA is not our ally here. We have to take matters into our own hands not only by advocating for a better diet for everyone - and that's the hard part - but by improving our own. And that happens to be quite easy. Less meat less junk more plants.

I've always been a bit of a decorator. I think if I wasn't a singer I'd probably be in stage setting or interior design or something. I like clutter and I'm quite visually greedy. I can't have things to be plain I have to have things looking interesting... maybe I'm just a frustrated interior designer stuck in a singing career.

For a culture that has such a problem with death we seem to deal with it in a quite bizarre way. We see people shot killed and blown up and we find it funny and sexy and all those things. But the reality of it is that every day people die and people are really sad and they grieve and they go through a really difficult process with it.

The death of anti-gay hate speech is no doubt being hastened by the head-spinning speed with which gays as a group - to say nothing of gay marriage - are becoming an unremarkable and even quite traditional parts of American life.

There's really no such thing as the agony of dying. I'm quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of death. You see something happens when the body knows it's about to go. Peptide hormones are released by cells in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Endorphins. They attach themselves to the cells responsible for feeling pain.

I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things: disease and death... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals.

McVeigh's lawyer got him the death penalty which quite frankly I could have done.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

I am dating but it is hard to find someone quick enough and funny enough. I am quite demanding.

I'm quite sensitive to women. I saw how my sister got treated by boyfriends. I read this thing that said when you are in a relationship with a woman imagine how you would feel if you were her father. That's been my approach for the most part.

My dad served in two wars has been flying airplanes for 60 years now. He was certainly quite an inspiration.