It is always better to tax bad things than good things.
On a grassroots level we say that man can touch more than he can grasp.
I take some pains to learn the material beforehand. I have a bunch of tricks I use to try and hit the ground running. I write everything out. I take the text and I very methodically go through, and that tends to put it into my head a little bit more solidly than if I just glanced at it and hoped for the best.
There are still thousands of people dying every year in Laos, mostly children and farmers, from unexploded anti-personnel ordnance that the U.S. simply saturated much of the land with, especially in the Plain of Jars. There actually is a British engineering team trying to remove some of these things, which are much worse than land mines.
I am a better cook than I am an actor. If I have any ego, it's about cooking. I'm one of the best cooks... and I cook in any language.
There's no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something's a story because Drudge links to it.
I want the films of every person I am compared to and am reportedly in competition with to do better than me.
We've been so disconnected agriculturally and culturally from food. We spend more time on dieting than on cooking.
I have to remind myself constantly to not be antisocial, because I stay to myself a lot. I'm a lot more introspective than my characters.
The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything.
The Dolls were the forefathers of glam. You never knew if they were going to kiss you or punch you. More than likely, they'd do both.
I still have a Gypsy sense of adventure. I don't think I have slept in the same bed for more than three or four months my whole life. I am always planting vegetables that I never get to eat and flowers that I never see flower. I have always moved around the world.
Sometimes making progress a step at a time is better than no progress at all.
Today you can go to a gas station and find the cash register open and the toilets locked. They must think toilet paper is worth more than money.
Anything other than a gold medal will be disappointing.
In 2013, I started playing Fara Sherazi on 'Homeland.' I love playing her, not just because she's a strong woman, but because for the first time, a Muslim woman is being portrayed on television as a regular person, rather than a cliche or collection of stereotypes.
Writing is much more satisfying on a certain level than acting ever was. Because you're not interpreting someone else's original idea, you can come up with your own.
For many years I thought my job was to go to places where it would be difficult for most of the readers to ever get to. Now, in the more than 20 years I've been doing this, the concept of adventure-travel trips or expeditions by groups has sprung up. The places I went 20 years ago now have adventure-travel trips.
My folks were drunks, and I had a rough childhood - really rough - in fact, rougher than I thought about.
You know you're getting old when you go to more funerals than you do weddings.
It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself.
Faked enthusiasm is worse than bad acting - it is bad acting with the intent to deceive.
If a movie has more characters than an audience can keep track of, the audience will get confused and lose interest in the story.
I was the tallest guy in the school, and I was very conscious of being larger than anybody - classmates and teachers.
Nothing is more important to national security and the making and conduct of good policy than timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence. Nothing is more critical to accurate and relevant intelligence than independent analysis.
I think I'm better at playing difficult than I am at being normal.
When I was growing up, I cheered and danced and ran and stuff like that. I'm probably thinner now than I was in high school. I had a lot of muscle - a lot of muscle in high school.
I have friends who I consider my peers, who have done amazing work, particularly in the film and television space, who came up as independent artists and who have been - to be brutally honest - much more prolific than I was able to be.
A relatively young woman is perceived as younger than a relatively young man.
We need to encourage young women to find what they love to do. That is a very valuable pursuit - more so than the pursuit of a boyfriend. When you have that core, you bring that core to every aspect of your life.
The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.
At the end of the day, what would be a Canadian sensibility? Is it Michael Ondaatje? Alice Munro? Is Margaret Atwood more Canadian than Neil Bissoondath?
It makes a lot more sense for us to be investing in jobs and education rather than jails and incarceration.
I thought I was okay in my first film, and then I was really, really bad in some films. I really cringe when I see some of my scenes. There's a scene in one film where a dog is biting me; the expressions I have made should be qualified as the most over-acted scene in the history of the cinema. The dog's expressions were more real than mine.
I might have made more money if I had outsourced to India, and I knew I'd find it easier to hire senior managers in London. But I wanted to be in Stoke. What could be more satisfying than creating work for 3,000 people in my home town?
I think the violence in 'The Hills Have Eyes' and 'High Tension' is much more traumatic than 'Piranha.'
