Sage words from celebrities in 2013

Select quotations from Katy Perry to James Earl Jones, culled from Richard Ouzounian’s weekly Big Interviews this year.

by Richard Ouzounian
TheStar (Toronto)
December 27, 2013

So many celebrities with so much to say. Some of it even worth repeating. Here are the best quotes from my "Big Interviews" with famous names in 2013.

JONI MITCHELL: "Yes, I often begin my songs on a personal level, but I hope they go on to a bigger truth that transcends my experience. I'm not saying, 'Look at me, look at me.' It's the exact opposite. I'm saying, 'Look at you, look at you. Are we not human? Do we not share these things?'"

CHRIS HADFIELD: "It's really hard to look at the world from up there in space and think that it's random. The world is so beautifully unique in an almost endless emptiness. And to try and look at that and think it happened by chance is really hard to rationalize."

KATY PERRY: "If you don't know who you are when you're under this spotlight, it can get really crazy on your psyche. If you put your love, your self-worth into someone else's hands, they can take it away at any time. I've experienced that and it's not very fun."

CHUCK HUGHES: "I spent 15 years of my life without ever knowing there was an actual thing called 'going to bed.' I'd just pass out."

MEGAN FOLLOWS: "Life throws some curves at you, that's for sure. Some are surprises, some are things that should have been obvious, but are not seen at the time.

ROB LOWE: "The more I learn, the more I agree with the old saying that politics is like sausage: it's okay to swallow it, but you don't want to see how it's made."

TONY BENNETT: "I don't want to be one of the biggest artists, but I do want to be one of the best. I just search for truth and beauty, and I leave it at that. And I try to put as much feeling in it as I can."

SHIRLEY DOUGLAS: "It took me a while to realize that when someone asked me over for a drink late at night, it meant more than that and I was chased around many rooms by many men. They were all much older and I could outrun them."

SOPHIA LOREN: "Some children, when they are young, have glorious dreams of what they want from life. I would simply dream of a good meal."

EDDIE IZZARD: "I'm a transvestite. It doesn't mean I'm gay, it doesn't mean I'm a girl. I don't want a sex change. I'm all boy. I fancy girls. And sometimes I fancy what they wear as well."

DOUGLAS COUPLAND: "I believe that wherever you find the profane, can the sacred be far behind?"

IAN MCKELLEN: "I had my first serious gay relationship when I was 25, but I wouldn't have been having this conversation with you until I was 49 years old. I was never ashamed of being gay, but I was always worried if people would be unhappy with me. I came to realize that the only person whose happiness I had to worry about in that area was my own."

WILLIAM BALDWIN: "Alec was the oldest, the first one of us to go into show business. I don't know what motivated my other two brothers, but for me, I saw Alec on TV acting in a soap opera and I said to myself, 'If this schmuck can do it, anybody can.'"

FRED PENNER: "I value so deeply what I have been allowed to do. I love my life. I love what I am doing. I have never condescended. What you see is what you get. I'm not playing any games."

MARK WAHLBERG: "I grew up in a part of Boston so tough that making it alive to puberty was a big deal. I was on my way to being one more kid who wound up dead in a dumpster before he was old enough to vote."

BEN BRANTLEY: "I don't tweet. I don't want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That's like writing haiku."

ATOM EGOYAN: "I remember as a kid in Victoria being raised in a world where the naughtiest thing possible was a store in Chinatown that sold a nudist magazine wrapped in plastic that you could maybe see if you climbed up and reached for it on the back shelf."

MARINA ABRAMOVIC: "The world doesn't need an artist who shows reality as it is. We know reality is shitty. An artist has to look at the future, to see what we can do better."

DAVID SEDARIS: "You know, when you're young, you don't think you're youthful, because it's the only life you've ever known. But when you get older, you know what you've lost. Now that's something to write about."

CYNDI LAUPER: "When you're on a pop tour it's all rock 'n' roll, baby, and they keep you up all night. On Broadway it's, 'Cyndi, you've got a rehearsal tomorrow, go home instead of having another glass of wine.'"

ADAM GOPNIK: "If you have to choose between puritanism and pleasure, you must be careful to choose wisely."

PINCHAS ZUKERMAN: "You have to have three elements to play music. You have to have a brain, of course. Then you have to have some heart. And finally, there has to be something burning inside your belly which makes you want to do this above and beyond everything else."

MICHAEL PALIN: "Television is a lot different now than it was when I started in the business. There's no more commonality of experience. There's no more families sitting around the screen watching the same show and making it something they share."

JANE LYNCH: "I had those fantasies in the back of my mind that everyone does that someone would spot me and grab me and make me a star, but when it didn't happen, I learned to just enjoy the ride. Smartest thing I ever did."

JAMES EARL JONES: "I enjoy it when black actors get to play parts that used to belong to white actors, but they have to be right for them. You've got to play the culture, not the colour."

BRAD GARRETT: "You know, I've squeezed a hell of a lot out of my 15 minutes of fame."

DAVID HASSELHOFF: "Baywatch. It gave the world Pamela Anderson and it gave me a couple of million dollars. But there's a funny thing about being on a hit show for a long time. When it ends, people think you died or something. The phone doesn't ring a lot."

RAYMOND TELLER: (Penn & Teller) "Just think about the moral implications of magic. If any so-called magicians ever had real magical powers, why would they waste them moving a car from one place to another? What about a cure for cancer? What about world hunger?"

DREW CAREY: "I went from no money to a lot of money. That's the biggest difference. Being famous is good and bad. You get treated better no matter where you go, but you lose a lot of privacy. It's a deal you make."

BILL COSBY: "There were other black comedians at the time and they concentrated on how different they were from the white people they were playing to. That wasn't my strategy. If you had the same problems with kids, or a job or a car that I did, then you'd identify with me. And then, what do you know? You were agreeing with a black man."

BEN HEPPNER: "I never knew what all the rules were back then. I'm still learning. But I guess if you've got some talent and some wit and some inspiration, you can go pretty far."

STUART MCLEAN: "My success seems very small to me. I'm a radio guy and a book guy. I've chosen the two quietest media to work in. The fame is very modest."

NICK OFFERMAN: "How do you make love in a canoe? Slowly. Very slowly and with some modicum of grace. You have to stay low, below the gunnels. That's my only advice."

CHRISTINA HENDRICKS: "Don Draper made a habit out of behaving badly from day one and everyone thought it was so attractive and sexy and wanted to be like him. Now that his life seems to be falling apart, I don't think anyone wants to emulate him anymore."

JEREMY IRONS: "There's many a morning I wake up and say, 'God, what did I do last night? I must be crazy!'...Well, fortunately not that often."