I certainly went to high school with some mean girls, and I would not wish that hell on anybody.
I love discomfort. I mean, my whole life is discomfort. One reason I can never retire is that the idea of just sitting on the beach totally comfortable is not a desideratum in my life. I like ambiguity, I like conflict, I like uncertainly.
I think origin stories are a great way to get people reinvested in a story. I mean, we originally accepted 'Star Trek' without knowing anything about Kirk or Spock. All we needed to know was that it took place in the future.
I don't have any siblings, but I have best friends that I have known since kindergarten that I'm protective of. If they call me and tell me someone was mean to them at school - I want to go to school and be mean to that person and try to stand up for them.
To be in 'Vogue' has to mean something. It's an endorsement. It's a validation.
Many creative people are finding that creativity doesn't grow in abundance, it grows from scarcity - the more Lego bricks you have doesn't mean you're going to be more creative; you can be very creative with very few Lego bricks.
People are so mean, it's exhausting.
I try to write cinematically. Let me define what I mean by that. First of all, I try to write in a visual way so that the reader can watch a movie in their head. And it keeps moving. I try to structure the stories like a screenplay may be structured.
Pessimists are toxic. I love optimists - and by that, I don't mean people who are unable to see challenges. Optimists are solution-oriented.
I talk to all the creative directors today, and they take me aside, and they say, 'You know, it must have been great back in those days when you could do anything you wanted.' I say, 'Huh? Excuse me?' I mean, we fought. In the '60s and '70s, you fought wars with clients, and you have to continue fighting wars to do great work.
We are all allowed to support whoever we'd like to in this country. That's the greatest part about being an American - one of them, that is; you know what I mean?
You know when a person goes into the ring to win, or at least not to lose. I mean, when a fighter is ready and goes to fight, than it can be seen by his look. Regardless of whether he gets hit or not, he goes forward, and regardless of whether he wins or loses, he wants to go forward, and it is clear from his burning eyes.
Give your kid some credit for being smart - just because they read about something doesn't mean they will do it.
I encourage people not to be passive consumers of music and of culture in general. And feeling like, yeah, you can enjoy the products of professionals, but that doesn't mean you don't have to completely give up the reins and give up every connection to music or whatever it happens to be.
Whenever I have even a spare second, I'm in the kitchen whipping up a batch of cookies. I make a mean batch of chocolate chippers.
I mean, in 'Big' and 'Pleasantville,' it's a journey that the characters go on where I think they come to kind of meet themselves at the end and who they actually are and give full voice to who they actually are. And that, you know, obviously fascinates me for some reason. Maybe I didn't adequately grow up.
We should recognize that nationalism does not mean discriminating against people of a different nationality. It simply means not allowing such people to seize our political power, for only when we Han are in control politically do we have a nation.
Anyone who's married to Mariah Carey - I'm pretty sure - doesn't have a great sense of humor. I mean, let's be honest: she's ridiculous. What is her game plan?
We need to be creative, on the cutting edge, challenged, and it's really hard going. It's relentless, and we're relentless, and we have a history of breaking engineers, producers. I mean, people come out of working with U2 and just go, 'I just don't know what's happened; it feels like a lifetime has passed by.' And that's just the way we work.
When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don't mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It's the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.
How can you compare my life to any other MEP? I mean, come on, it's crackers, isn't it? Look, other MEPs do five days a week in Brussels and pop home for weekends. I'm working seven bloody days a week, all the hours God sends. If you include the socialising, it's over 100 hours a week.
I am no historian, but Hungary is a country which has never known democracy - and by that, I mean not a democratic political system, but an organic process which has mobilised the entire country's society. In the case of Hungary, this development was blocked by the growth of the Ottoman empire in the 16th century.
The REM and Nirvana successes don't mean much to me except as a potential distraction for bands who want to cash in on the trend. Don't try to sound like someone else. REM and Nirvana don't sound like anyone else.
A degree is an asset, but it doesn't mean anything by itself. It's just another asset. So is being persuasive, having good personality, being smart.
I think people assume that because I talk the way that I talk that I grew up with money, and then I've had to say, 'No, I grew up poor.' And then I was like, 'Why do I have to play this game where the only black experience that's authentic is the one where you grew up in poverty?' I mean, it's ridiculous.
Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.
Australia has suffered a decade of drought, epic floods, a Category 5 cyclone, and a plague of locusts. But just because Aussies have the biggest carbon footprint in the world, it doesn't mean they're stupid.
I have romantic ideas about home and what it should mean.
I have sympathy for anyone who finds consolation anywhere we can. And many people do find it in religious tradition as it has been. I mean, I love much of that tradition. But somehow, that just didn't speak to me in the way that it does to some.
I mean, sometimes... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of acting is to be truthful, and they get that mixed up sometimes, or don't even notice that that's the thing.
Sometimes, reading my own media, the negativity can upset me, but I just deal with things on a positive basis. I mean, I have up to 20,000 people singing my words back to me on a nightly basis - they share my hopes and fears, and they relate to my own life experiences. Life can be pretty isolating, but that connection is always amazing.
A dirty player is somebody who ultimately is trying to hurt somebody. There's a huge difference. There's no gray in that. Like, you have no conscience, no nothing, no guilt. I don't have that mean streak in me. I don't play angry. It's not anger.
Just because marriage didn't work for us doesn't mean we don't believe in the institution. Just because our own marital track records are mixed doesn't mean our hearts don't lift at the sight of our daughters' Tiffany-blue wedding invitations.
I've learned that, in many cases, people say, 'I want ground truth,' and they don't really mean it. There are warts all over this organization, as there are in many organizations, but you just have to tell truth to power and let the chips fall where they may.
I've had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they're people, and they're going to do their thing.
I feel like the menswear blogger is a special breed, and by that, I mean they really have brought menswear out of the closet and into the public discourse where guys are not afraid to talk about style, dressing, clothes.
