In England and Europe we have this huge music called ambient - ambient techno ambient house ambient hip-hop ambient this ambient that.

I dropped out of NYU moved out of my parent's house got my own place and survived on my own. I made music and worked my way from the bottom up.

I'm a big collector of vinyl - I have a record room in my house - and I've always had a huge soundtrack album collection. So what I do as I'm writing a movie is go through all those songs trying to find good songs for fights or good pieces of music to layer into the film.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

I don't have a lot of patience for boring arthouse movies.

I remember when first Stripes and then Animal House came out - which I was really proud of even though it was kind of loose and quite raucous - there were imitative movies that were not quite as good.

I didn't know this about myself but when 'Pirates of the Caribbean' came out I realised that I didn't enjoy a huge amount of recognition. I didn't react to it well but I think life is about finding out who you are and what you like. So I started doing independent movies and art-house films instead.

I'm a person who likes these sort of movies... sad but moving 'art movies' that normally are at a festival and then they go to a small art house theater and disappear.

I'd see movies comedies and I loved 'Animal House' I loved all the John Hughes stuff but I never saw me and my friends totally represented.

Comedy. It was just huge in my house. Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness Monty Python and all those James Bond movies were highly regarded.

I remember being a kid and sleeping over at my friend's house and staying up late and watching 'Nosferatu.' Vampire movies are supposed to be secret and bad. They should be rated R.

This enraged the other Nazi so much that the next morning he came to our house and he shot my father.

Politics gets me out of bed in the morning It's what really interests me. I'm a competitor but I also feel like I'm contributing whether it's working on health-care policy in the White House or out here in Chicago.

There we times when everybody in the house has the flu. You're cleaning up vomit and it's 2 in the morning and you're wishing there was somebody else there to help you.

This house was our dream-the gardens the study even the swimming pool. Even though I can't see John when I wake up in the morning I can always feel him here with me.

It's not like I just have to go to Washington and go to the White House everyday and go to the same press conference at 10 in the morning and then be briefed at 4 in the afternoon and then get a story on at 6.

I remember we woke up one morning at Denny's house and John Phillips called. He said you guys okay? We said yeah what's wrong what's going on? He said well everybody's dead over at Sharon's house at Terry Melcher's place.

If I'm coming in at 4:00 in the morning and my kids have been in bed since 8:00 9:00 that's not setting a good example. The responsibility that I have kids inside my household has made me realize now that I have to be an example.

I certainly don't sit around in the morning making pancakes listening to Whitehouse or anything.

My poor vision gives me a soft-focus morning. For the first half hour I kind of wander through my house and everything is a blur. I put my contacts in when I'm ready to deal with the world.

Sometimes it's so weird just to do an interview. This morning I was back in my parents' house with my brother and we went for a jog together then had breakfast as a family. And a couple of hours later I'm wearing high heels and a dress and makeup and talking about my job.

It was important on The Shipping News to have my house far enough away from each location so I had this time in the morning to think about my shots and still remain open to surprises once I got to the set.

You know what I like to do on a Sunday morning? Clean my house. I really enjoy it it's my ritual. I require tidiness actually. I have to have everything spotless before I can relax.

You know the men go to tea houses with the expectation that they will have a nice quiet evening and not read about it the next morning in the newspaper.