As cheesy as it sounds, nothing beats a smile and a bit of confidence! As long as you feel good on the inside, you can still look beautiful without any makeup at all.

It sounds so nerdy and pathetic, but what I always do on Sunday afternoon is bring my inbox down to zero, which is so sad. But e-mail has become like homework for adults. I'll have 141 messages from people who will be offended if I don't write back.

The delta blues is a low-down, dirty shame blues. It's a sad, big wide sound, something to make you think about people who are dead or the women who left you.

As a songwriter I hate this whole, 'If it's a sad song, it has to sound like a sad song thing.' And that goes all the way back to my days with the Format. I'm an insane narcissist, so if I have to get something off my chest, I'll get something off my chest.

The first beat that I ever made that I thought was actually worth a damn was called 'Toilet Paper Nostrils,' and I made it when I had a cold. I had the worst cold ever. And I had toilet-paper nostrils making music, but it was really reflective of how I felt. It was a really sad trumpet sound.

You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good.

It sounds a bit sad, but my new hobby is knitting. I love it. I find it really relaxing.

I love sad songs. They say so much. I love country music but even the happy songs sound really sad.

It kind of sounds pretentious, but a film I find deeply romantic is 'Buffalo '66,' which is a film by Vincent Gallo. It's about how you break down all those barriers and expose yourself and open yourself up to ultimately being hurt.

Kabul is a walled city, which sounds romantic except the walls are pre-cast reinforced concrete blast barriers, 10 feet tall and 15 feet long and moved into place with cranes. The walls are topped with sandbags, and the sandbags are topped with guard posts from which gun barrels protrude.

There is something about a Luger that separates it from all other handguns, and Luger devotees and Luger society members speak of it in romantic terms that must sound plain nuts to those who consider themselves level-headed.

German accents and Hassidic accents aren't that romantic. They're more harsh. Although Hebrew, when spoken by certain people, sounds beautiful. There's this beautiful woman I know who speaks Hebrew, and when she speaks, it's so attractive. Maybe it's who's speaking it.

I don't like the way recording to digital sounds. Most of the time, when I'm recording to two-inch tape, I still have a romantic vision of how songs sounded coming out of the radio when I was younger, and how they sounded coming out of my little four-track cassette player.

I hate to sound like a romantic adolescent, but I believe artists don't generally see art as a career choice; they simply can't overcome their desire to make art, and will live on little income for as long as they have to, before they start to sell their work - or give up and get a paying job.

My husband, Sal, and I put date nights on the calendar once a week. I know that doesn't sound romantic, but otherwise it won't get done.

In terms of romantic films, all-time romantic films, I really like 'Gone With the Wind.' And I realize I sound so cliched saying that, but there's something so absolutely romantic about it.

At the risk of sounding hopelessly romantic, love is the key element. I really love to play with different musicians who come from different cultural backgrounds.

The phrase 'off with the crack of the bat', while romantic, is really meaningless, since the outfielder should be in motion long before he hears the sound of the ball meeting the bat.

Usually, in romantic comedies, you end up sacrificing a great deal of the complexity - you know, just two attractive people and a good soundtrack.

I am a very romantic person, and I love 'love' - however cheesy that sounds!

There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.

A lot of companies have nice-sounding cultural values like integrity, respect, and excellence, but if those values don't map to specific behaviors, then they quickly get lost. Instead, we see what's called a 'halo effect' where leaders tend to overvalue certain attributes and undervalue others.

I want to invite the mainstream into my world and to my sound and to what I'm doing. And I want mainstream artists to respect me and accept Latino artists as equals without us having to sing in English. I want them to know that I can compete globally, with whomever, in Spanish.

I have a lot of respect for people who are great at ad-libbing and for writers and directors who are able to create a scene in which that works. Judd Apatow is fantastic at it. But as an audience member, I like the sound of something that's been written - I like it to sound written.