Here am I, sweating my brains out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a single spark of enthusiasm.

I say--I've thought of a good plot for a detective story. Really? Top--hole. You know, the sort that people bring out and say 'I've often thought of doing it myself, if only I could find time to sit down and write it.' I gather that sitting down is all that is necessary for producing masterpieces.

People who seek to serve the community end up falsifying their work, she wrote, whether the work is writing a novel or baking bread, because they are not single- mindedly focused on the task at hand. But if you serve the work— if you perform each task to its utmost perfection— then you will experience the deep satisfaction of craftsmanship and you will end up serving the community more richly than you could have consciously planned.

Whatever you do, do with all your might.

I would like to do a musical, if I could find a cool one. A song-and-dance role is closer to me personally than other characters I play.

'Phantom of the Opera' started in my little 100-seater converted church in Britain with a stage where we did what we did. But it was the score itself was what made it.

Nothing will ever be as big as 'The Phantom of the Opera' for me.

It is very important for an artiste to be excited about her work in every phase of her career. If a tiredness seeps into one's attitude, it will show in the quality of one's work.

My fingers are always in every single pie.

Lil Jon was definitely a pioneer for some of the punk-rap acts we see now. He showed you could scream on a song and still have a hit on the radio.

It's considered a coup to become a lead on a kind of cutting-edge television series. I mean, that's a plus for your feature film career and for your career in general. There are no walls anymore between the two.

Ever since I was a girl, I have written about one to five pages every day - on napkins, on scrap paper, in notebooks and tablets, on the walls in my room as a teenager, and in orange paint on the cheap white plastic blinds in my room.