My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible.
We ended up moving out to Texas. We live outside of Austin. We've got a couple horses, we've got three miniature donkeys, we've got four dogs. Miniature donkeys are very warm, loving animals.
It's hard for the donkeys to win the race if they're going to carry the elephants on their backs.
And the political system is changing rapidly in this country, and we better realize that. The elephants or donkeys are not what younger people look to. They look at individual candidates' philosophy, and I think it's a different time and a different generation.
When it comes to pinning blame, pin the tail on the donkeys.
There is that thing about not working with animals and children - I don't think that's true. Although you should never work with donkeys.
Dogs and other animals - goats, donkeys, cows, a grumpy rooster - continue to change my writing life.
I have two brothers and we basically spent our lives playing in the woods, falling in ponds, getting chased by wasps and riding donkeys that we shouldn't have been riding.