When my husband turned 40, I was obsessed. 'Has he had his medical checkup?' He needed to go to the doctor; he needed to go to the dentist. Any little cough, I was really on him. Then he turned 40, and I thought, 'Maybe that's why I've been so obsessed with his health!'

My mother was a nurse, and in her era, most diseases weren't understood; people put mustard plasters on knees and rubbed camphor on your chest if you had a cough and did funny things to you if you had tuberculosis - all these things that really made very little difference once proper treatments were brought in.

Well, we played with Soul Coughing once for like two days, that was pretty cool. I mean they were all good, you can pull a great experience from everything.

That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the, 'Oh, somebody coughed in the background; we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.

Whooping cough is not a mild disease. Whooping cough, before the vaccination, could make you very, very sick. First of all, there was a chance you could die from it - small chance, not a big chance. You would be coughing and coughing. It wouldn't last for a few days, like a cold.

I once choked on a chip at a friend's birthday when I was seven and had to be sent home, as I'd broken my collarbone coughing.

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

There are moments on stage when everything comes together. Then the kid in the front row coughs.

seeing a woman cough today made me sense a vague fear of death

Black women are the tall trees that remain standing in a forest after a fire. They carry themselves like royal oak trees; mighty. untouchable. From below, you can see our tight spirals and our limbs stretching. We have been hurt; our sweet sap coughing out of our mouths and oozing down from our eyes. They cut off our sprouting gardens on our heads. We are trampled down in deforestation?What about the little trees watching our mothers and fathers fall from grace? Is America listening? Why have you lied?

Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.

I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.

True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.

The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags - they're gonna cough.

Well we played with Soul Coughing once for like two days that was pretty cool. I mean they were all good you can pull a great experience from everything.

That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the 'Oh somebody coughed in the background we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.