Few if any teenagers can relate to getting up for school and finding famous comics like Pryor and Williams hanging out in your living room after a hard night of partying. But that's Hollywood.

Hollywood people want to build you up and make you famous only to knock you off you're the pedestal they built for you.

You meet people in Hollywood that are famous and you're not sure what they got famous for.

People just assume that if you're famous you're in Hollywood.

You know most people they want to go to Hollywood. They want to be a star. They want to be a rock star. That thought never entered any of our minds the Van Halen family.

I'm often asked if I regret not going to Hollywood. I'm glad I didn't go because if I had I wouldn't have my extended family which is the fabric of my life. Only recently have I realised how special and unusual it is.

The first pages of memory are like the old family Bible. The first leaves are wholly faded and somewhat soiled with handling. But when we turn further and come to the chapters where Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise then all begins to grow clear and legible.

Hollywood is a suction for your confidence or your faith or your togetherness. Just walking on the street you can feel it.

My faith doesn't go over real well in Hollywood.

There is no middle ground in Hollywood you're a failure or you're a success. That mentality is wild.

Hollywood... a city I was to come back to time and again in sickness and in health in success and in failure with anticipation and with dread.

You get so afraid of failure and so afraid of losing and so afraid of not being the best that it's not a natural drive - it's born out of fear of failure. Which helps in Hollywood.

I mean I love L.A. - I love living here. But I wish that we could make things without the need to hit a home run every single time. It's a unique thing to Hollywood that if you don't do that every time then you're considered a failure.

I mean I love L.A. - I love living here. But I wish that we could make things without the need to hit a home run every single time. It's a unique thing to Hollywood that if you don't do that every time then you're considered a failure. But it's like 'Well are you making movies to be successful? Or are you making movies to learn something?'

But in the back of my mind I've always looked to the biggest-scale Hollywood movies. Because to me the most satisfying experience is of watching a movie if it's done really well. And so that aspiration is always it for me if I have the opportunity to do it.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither in my experience do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

One nice thing about being a woman in Hollywood is that the women tend to be very close-knit. All of us writers and directors know each other and cling to each other for safety and support and it's really a completely different vibe than the men experience out here where they're all trying to murder each other.

It's good to experience Hollywood in short bursts I guess. Little snippets. I don't think I can handle being here all the time it's pretty nutty.

What I got which was unusual especially as a child actress was parents who believed that Hollywood was not that important. They told us education family health all come first and they meant it.

Hollywood has always been a cage... a cage to catch our dreams.

Hollywood is the dream factory and no one dreams about older women.

I am a child of Hollywood and dreams. To me to be on the red carpet is the best place in the world.

I tell people 'It's just like a cliche but it's true: In Hollywood dreams can come true.'

I cook croquetas and I eat jamon. I keep my diet 100% Mediterranean and drink my Rioja. In that sense I have a piece of Spain in West Hollywood.