Diane Schuurs

It’s been quite a journey. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!

I try to keep my ego at the right size. No matter what, I just do my best to live in an attitude of gratitude.

[on Frank Sinatra] He was a compassionate guy. He loved to have fun. He had a movie theatre in his house. We munched on popcorn and watched movies together.

I was determined to succeed in what I loved to do. I wasn’t going to let my disability stand in my way.

I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, ‘Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.

My career has been a combination of hard work and timing. Working with Stevie Wonder at the Kennedy Center Honors was timing. The Tonight Show was timing. Carnegie Hall, that was timing. My marriage was timing. I was ready, I wanted to know what it was like.

[On Joni Mitchell] If I didn’t talk to her for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t miss her for a minute.

[on Mae West] I do think she was a spectacular talent. There’s no question she was a comedic genius, but I did, in person, actually feel like she was some kind of a dockworker in drag.

I actually love the audition process, so I’m so happy to fight for things. I would love to read something that I want to fight for, but lately the scripts are not that compelling.

It sounds lame, but I was really concentrating on this job. It was my first American thing so I was pretty focused. I went to Portland for two months before we starting shooting, and I just didn’t talk to anybody for ages during the beginning of the shoot. I never went out, but I kind of broke down half way through. I was like, ‘Okay, people are starting to think that I’m actually out of my mind now.

Boys love being bossed around by me tho…

[on “The Cell”] I didn’t really want to do it, from reading the script. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It was (Cell director) Tarsem (Singh) and his visuals that made me want to do it. It’s almost like you walk through a museum exhibit of an artist in a dark period of his life.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve really worked toward balancing my life out more, having a little bit more time with friends, family and my boyfriend. There was a period of time when they were way down the list. It was all about music and touring and if everything fell by the wayside, so be it.

Record sales don’t really mean anything. For us, the pressure is imagining some 15-year-old kid in Cincinnati who buys our album and doesn’t feel like he wasted his pocket money.

Girls are a distraction and can easily cost points.

The greatest Rock’n’Roll drummer of all time was John Bonham who did things that nobody had ever even thought possible before with the drum kit. And also the greatest sound out of his drums – they sounded enormous, and just one bass drum. So fast on it that he did more with one bass drum than most people could do with three, if they could manage them. And he had technique to burn and fantastic power and tremendous feel for rock’n’roll. “When the levee breaks” is the archetypal heavy drum sound – it’s never been bettered – it’s like a steamroller, enormous bass drum. Simple but takes feel.

I just needed a job. Before being hired as an usher at the CBS Theater, I didn’t even know there was a show business.

I don’t believe that to be fulfilled you have to have kids. What’s the point? I can’t guarantee my child won’t suffer pain because that kid’s going to be in pain at some point in their life. I don’t want to see that. It’s too much.

I’m not going to have a baby until I’m around 30-something.

I don’t think these women are stupid. I think they’re selling a personality that’s very marketable: Wouldn’t it be fun if we were all gorgeous and didn’t have a care? But creating a cultural icon out of someone who goes, “I’m stupid, isn’t it cute?” makes me want to throw daggers at them! I want to say to them, “My grandma did not fight for what she fought for, and my mother did not fight for what she fought for, so you can start telling women it’s fun to be stupid.” Saying that to young women, little girls, my daughter? It’s not OK.

It is a little insulting that you’re trying to appeal to adult women voters the same way that Mattel attempts to appeal to eight year olds. And at least Barbie’s pink bus had the good sense to unfold into a sweet hot tub and party den combo. … The only way it could be even more patronizing is if its wheels were giant NuvaRings and they refused to let women drive it.