I believe that companies are, above all, agents of transformation.
As soon as I started acting in England, I got unusual roles. Although I'm 6 foot six, and agents might standardly cast me in tough guy roles or the big guy in the back, I've been very blessed to do roles that makes them think twice about how they're gonna cast me.
A whole bunch of agents and editors looked at my stories, and they all said, in effect, 'You're a pretty good writer and you should probably get these published; when you grow up and write a novel, get in touch.'
I'm happy that I have agents and managers that believe in me.
If all our agents would abridge their speeches one half, I am satisfied the effect produced would be much greater. The 'art of leaving off' at the right time, and in the right place, is one of the most difficult things to learn.
In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering.
I was being rejected all the time. Agents would say, 'I don't think you're the type they're looking for.' I was always like, 'You think? I don't want you to think. I want them to think that.' This business is all about someone's opinion, but not the agent or the manager's. How do they know? They're not that person.
I've never had a manager, and I've had various agents, and, fortunately or unfortunately, I've been blessed.
I got my agents right out of school, and I booked my first commercial right away. It was always enough to not quit and do something else.
I've stopped reading about the death of books because it's wasteful and morbid and insulting to the authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, critics, and readers that keep the world community of fiction interesting.
The need to deal with pathogens has driven the evolution of the vertebrate immune system, so it should not be surprising that experiments with infectious agents have often illuminated key elements of the underlying mechanisms.
I am the CEO and co-founder of Purpose - a social movement incubator and agency. We work on ways to help millions of people combine their power as citizens, consumers and cultural agents.
Maybe I should mention it: I was not from the beginning mainly interested in papilloma virus; I was mainly interested in infectious agents in human cancer. So papilloma viruses came up as the most likely candidate from my viewpoint.
When I worked in the White House in the 1970s and '80s, I was often stopped within the White House by agents checking my credentials. They were very observant and would stop anyone they didn't recognize.
You can write the best book you can, and that might still not be enough. Appeal isn't something that most writers can't strive for or identify. It's something even the best agents and editors can't always identify.
Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies.
In my experience, with very few exceptions - I am, as it happens, one of the exceptions - the one thing that most editors don't want to do is edit. It's not nearly as conducive to a successful career as having lunch out with important agents or going to meetings where you get noticed.
Illegal immigration can never be completely stopped, no matter how high the wall or how many patrol agents you have watching it.
It used to annoy and frustrate me to have to come in and audition. I would say to my agents, 'Haven't they seen this film and this film and this film? They know what I look like... They must.' Until I directed an episode of 'Roswell.' And all of a sudden, I realized why that was such an important thing.
Children are free moral agents and have a right to be exposed to a range of beliefs well beyond the rigid doctrinal confines of their parent's faith, and we have an obligation to insist that they be so exposed, at least in public schools, if not elsewhere.
Even before I was working off-Broadway, there were lots of different TV shows that I would actually say 'no' to, and my agents would be like, 'Are you crazy?' but they stuck with me because they know the kind of things that excite me.
We grow up with this idea that we're all individual agents. We work, make our money, have our place to live and our satellite TV. But whether you like it or not, you need family or community.
Canada has, at times, represented itself as a country in a valiant struggle against powerful and menacing agents that are indifferent to its special practices and sensibilities - most especially American culture. It's the old, outdated garrison mentality.
If you'd come to me in 2012, when the last presidential election was raging and we were cooking up ever more complicated ways to monetize Facebook data, and told me that Russian agents in the Kremlin's employ would be buying Facebook ads to subvert American democracy, I'd have asked where your tin-foil hat was.
If the auto companies were free agents, they would act to break the fuel monopoly that is so damaging to their own interests and those of their customers. But they are not, and so they won't.