I have this theory that people in Hollywood don't read. They read 'Vanity Fair' and then consider themselves terribly well read. I think I can basically write about anybody without getting caught.
Filming is so much to do with rhythm, as is music, and if it isn't there then you know in the end nobody can save it really, they can't.
You can think as Einstein as much as you want, but when you come in contact with another person as a work unit of some kind, you have to think as one. You have to figure out all the things that you've studied and that your mind is telling you, and then you have to figure out how to make it work as one, or you have a broken down team.
When I'm working on a movie, I'm in my trailer playing guitar. And then on the road, I read scripts and think of... it just keeps both fires burning. I kind of need both.
An animal takes freely anything that it wishes: it commits no sin and is not held responsible for its action because it knows no better. But as soon as the idea of 'mine' and 'thine' has been imprinted upon our consciousness, then also the responsibility comes.
I think quite a bit of organized religion has become big business. Jesus Christ never sold the word of God. He never gave a sermon and then said, 'For $8.99, you can buy the CD.'
Then, of course, I played alto and tenor, wherever there were jobs.
My Mum brought me up to believe that if you look after the pennies then the pounds look after themselves, and I could never do it.
What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
I don't want to be in a movie with 20 minutes of dialogue and then stand around while the robots start explosions.
I thought I was a pretty good writer, but I didn't have anything to write about. I wanted to go out in the world, have some adventures and then write about them.
I did children's theater when I was younger, and then when I was about 14 I started doing theater in New York City.
Coming up with ideas isn't hard. The real challenge is finding the time to actually build something and then finding a home for it.
So you eat, you sleep, and then this wonderful child comes out, but you don't feel like you have any control over that process, over her, over her character and who she is.
If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
If we ever find out how the brain works, with all its complexity, then we will be able to build a machine that has consciousness. And if that happens, that is a road to planetary disaster because everything we've thought about ourselves, since the Bronze Age, the Bible, all of that will be gone.
You must never aspire to 'finish' a house, you can merely hope to start it, and from then on it's an evolutionary process.
If you have six corporate centres, six treasuries, six of everything, and then if you bring it down to one of everything, obviously there are some savings.
The interviews have gotten much longer with 'Humans of New York.' When I was first starting, I was just photographing people. And then I went to just kind of including a quote or two. Now when I'm approaching somebody on the street, I'm spending about 30 to 45 minutes with them often.
But when you have to deal with notes, and to be able to make a full definition of what a sound is - if you are not around that environment, then you'll find you lose that feel, that momentum, you lose all that.
Politically, foreign policy never matters until it matters, and then it matters a lot.
It's a strange thing that we're actors, and we're always playing a character, and then suddenly we're at a place like Cannes, and we're getting photographed as ourselves, and you're like, 'What do you do?'
I then moved to the University of Western Ontario where I was made a full professor in 1985.
Years and years ago, I was obsessed with these Pamela Love necklaces, and they had a claw, like an eagle claw, which was silver. Then I found one on this random website. I thought it was a fake claw, and when it arrived, it was a real one, cut off from the animal! It came to my house, and it was disgusting; it was a chicken claw or something.
I never say 'nagging.' I think that 'nagging' is a term that men created to get women to pipe down some. But, it's a trap that we've created. We created several terms for women to back you down. Nagging means to stop asking me questions, then we get away with more. I think it's a term men created.
When I go into a theater, I'm very excited to turn off my phone. But then, of course, I get anxiety.
Women are called upon to defend every bit of progress we have made against particularly virulent attack. But we must also hold out a vision, put forth a positive agenda of what women need and want and then move forward toward that dream.
If the movie is good then great, but if it's not then God, I feel so bad for that person with their face fifty feet tall, all blown up. Some people would be happy with that, that as long as their face was out there they're stoked about it. I'm not like that.
It always amazes me when people ask you to do something and then tell you how to do it.
Tequila. Straight. There's a real polite drink. You keep drinking until you finally take one more and it just won't go down. Then you know you've reached your limit.
How often have I met and disliked writers whose books I love; and conversely, hated the books and then wound up liking the writer? Too often.
When I started doing television, I had no idea that people were watching it. But then things opened up for television in such a way that it's no more 'small' screen, as it is called.
Titles are very hard. Sometimes a title comes before I start to write the book, but often I finish the book, and I still don't have a title. I have to go through the book again, and then sometimes I hope a title jumps out at me from what I've written.
And the whole Oscar thing, that is just surreal: you spend months and months doing promotion, and then come back to reality with this golden thing in your hands. You put it in the office and then you just have to look at it sitting on the shelf. And, after about two weeks, you go: 'What is that doing there?'
The groundhog is like most other prophets; it delivers its prediction and then disappears.
My strategy has always been to give people just enough of me, then pull back. That way, they'll want more.
