I was completely unqualified to get into Harvard. But then I went to my interview for Harvard, and the woman asked, 'Why do you want to go here?' And I took out all of my comedy writing samples that I had done. I couldn't have been more delusional in terms of what I thought they wanted in a candidate for college.
When the first 'Hellboy' series came out, in the same batch of fan mail I got a letter from somebody from the Church of Satan, and I got a letter from a minister, and they both liked it. And I thought, 'What am I doing that I'm making both these guys happy?'
Culture is this thing that exists apart from our real life but is something we all have tacitly agreed to in America. And what film and television do, particularly in this country, is lay out the characters involved in this invisible agreement and dictate who and what can participate.
I'm married, and my wife has set out very limited Xbox limits. But if I had my druthers, I'd be playing all the time and never see any of my friends or do any work.
I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life I've done a lot of strange jobs, and the effect has been to make me think a little more skeptically about our capitalist society.
But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things.
When you're trying to come up with a good approach to reporting on the bleeding edge of where the conversation's moving, you're just leaving a lot of people who aren't on the bleeding edge of that conversation out.
The prospect of being a father made me ask myself a question. How do you know what kind of adult your child will turn out to be? And how much can you control that?
I'm looking forward to fighting Chisora, getting him out of the way, and then fighting Klitschko for all the belts, but I don't think Wladimir is going to take the fight.
I thought that I would have a huge literary novel coming out when I was, like, 29. I quit my banking job, and I was halfway through my second novel - and I will never publish it, because it's very mediocre.
As a woman, you need to take control of your health. There's no harm in going in and getting checked out. Eventually, you have to ask yourself: 'Do I want to live at 100% or 80%?'
I was out to have a good time and have some fun. It's a fun script and fun people are in the movie.
I was once so terrified of acting that I used to pretend I was ill to get out of drama.
Toddlers need to get off the soccer field and onto the playground. Children need to get out of the gym and into neighborhood stickball games. We need to give kids room to create their own rules, set their own terms, and move their bodies in their own ways.
My house borders horse farms, and I can look out my window and see the horses and the new colts. It's really peaceful.
I realized if I'm not really making an album, I don't have to be concerned about things like stylistic consistency, pacing, a coherent mood. All that stuff goes out the window.
With food, you're the artist; you put the colour in it, you present it to the table and it has the ability to knock out the senses. It can look fabulous, be beautifully presented and smell great and taste good as well.
I think, most of us, when we look back over our lives, see perhaps moments when everything was dangerous and precarious. We're making all these mistakes, and yet somehow we make it through. It's the making it through that that interests me. To go through the valley of trouble and come out the other side. That's what we all have to do.
A soulmate is someone who you could spend a great deal of time with just sitting on a sofa and feel happy. You don't need fanfare. You don't need to go out to expensive restaurants.
Most small businesses in this country today are taxed at the individual level as Corporation LLC. So whatever is cut out of those earnings is money taken out of capital for reinvestment for creating more jobs and opening up more locations.
When I was first going out to funky events, it was a lovely kind of music to dance to - it had such a nice vibe.
The thing I worry about for myself is I spend a lot of time alone, and another person comes around and you're like, 'What are you doing here? Get out of here.'
Breaks in trust are infuriating and hurtful, but they don't entitle you to flame out, throw a fit, or stomp around rolling your eyes. Try to keep the steam from coming out of your ears.
When I started out playing small clubs, you could feel the room recoil from certain kinds of songs. Anything that was too personal, that had a sentiment to it, or was laying out your feelings, was immediately booed. People would start throwing things. And anything that was really provocative or humorous or radical was embraced or cheered.
All those trucks and barges that carry our goods to port are vital connections to the only force which can balance our trade deficit: export. We must keep doing what we do best if we are going to get America out of the red.
When I'm making the music, I feel like everything I throw out has to work. It counts. Because if you don't have people turning they neck all the way around to see what it is, it ain't stick on the wall.
As an actor, it's hard to direct because, suddenly, you're not around. The thing which I hate about directing is the waiting game, but you've really got to wait it out and be resilient and keep it going and keep everybody motivated.
Calling out people for not voting, what experts term 'public shaming,' can prod someone to cast a ballot.
I get stressed out really easily.
You have a generation that is saying we are tapping out of religion in many ways. But what they are not saying is that we are tapping out of a serious search for meaning in life.
Some movies get rushed out right after you make them and I'm not always happy with that.
I feel a terrifically painful disturbance in the natural law of things between men and women that must be balanced in the next few thousand years. What has been done in the name of holding up masculine energy as God and feminine energy as subservient has really wiped out everything.
We've come into the world of '1984,' but it turns out to be '1984'-Lite.
The funniest people I know were, not necessarily troubled, but had a harder time in school or were shy or picked on or something like that. I think that you rely on it. 'Well, I don't think I'm cute and no one wants to hang out with me - I'd better start trying to make people laugh.' I think there's an element of that in there.
I feel 'The Night Circus' has a complete story arc in one book. I like it as a single volume. It feels complete to me, and I wouldn't want to stretch it out into something it's not.
Despite the efforts of some parents, children still tend to act out the traditional sex roles of our culture. The child's peer group may have more of an influence over this than the parents.
