I grew up watching 'Rambo' and 'Rocky' and all of those movies, so you have a surreal moment, even as an actor, when you're in front of these guys, whether it's DeNiro or Stallone. You have a moment like, 'Geez, that's Sylvester Stallone,' and then you have to snap out of it and get back in the pocket of the character.
As a songwriter, if you can touch people and make them feel a little less alone in the world, then you've done your job.
I could share an hour of warm camaraderie with Dad, then once I'd walked out the door, get the uncanny feeling I'd disappeared into the wings of his mind's stage, like a character no longer necessary to the ongoing story line.
You can only do so much grunting and groaning and then you're done, you know?
You talk all the time about being connected, being a unit, believing in each other. But if you have unnamed sources, people out there cutting you down, and then you find out it's the person calling the plays - that would be really hard to deal with, to look at him the same way.
Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things.
Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.
If you wanted to watch me work, it would be totally boring. It would look like a Warhol film where nothing happens. I sit for 24 hours, then I scratch myself.
When you are happy and in love and when you have children, then maybe you are beautiful.
I start with the subject matter I want to write about. Then I make a musical base for that and create an atmosphere with the music. Once I've done that, the lyrics come last.
Then we can help these failed states turn around and give their people a better life. This, too, is a critical part of this global war on terrorism, and Canada and the United States are together.
I'm one of those writers who can't talk about what they're working on. The entire four years I was writing 'House of Sand and Fog,' my wife never saw a word of it. I just have to keep it in the womb, and then everyone can have a crack at it.
Then I became aware of the site as the traffic for it became higher. The most recent contact was this girl Lily. She wanted me to shoot her for the site and she actually showed up. There a lot of people who contact me to do a shoot for a website then you never hear from them.
In Rikers, you had the Italians over here, the Spanish over here, the Blacks here, then there would be your Christians here and your Muslim brotherhood here. It's just like the outside, but in very closed quarters where you have to get along or else. The sense of claustrophobia in 'Orange is the New Black' - that's real.
I just always expect the best because I'm a competitor and if I'm competing, then obviously I'm trying to be better in everything.
On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love never faileth and life never faileth so long as there is love.
Rugby is great. The players don't wear helmets or padding; they just beat the living daylights out of each other and then go for a beer. I love that.
When you are intelligent and beautiful you face a lot of problems. If you are beautiful and stupid then it's easy.
I don't think that much anymore in terms of 'write a record, record a record, tour a record,' because in my own mind, things have changed, in that I'm just an ongoing artist. I'm not quite sure what the next project needs to be until it presents himself, and then I know. I just follow dutifully while I'm being led.
And then lo and behold IBM, Apple and Motorola took an ad in all the newspapers, double page ad, and said, announcing the chip that they were now able to manufacture it and that they were going to kill Intel.
In my Nobel lecture, I suggested we had until the year 2000 to tame the population monster, and then food shortages would take us under. Now I believe we have a little longer.
In Hollywood people lie to each other and cheat each other and then go and play tennis. But I don't want to be a tennis player.
I have had more honors than I've deserved and more rewards than I expected. It can be tempting just to say, 'Well, I'm going to retire.' But what would I do then? Sit in a chair and watch TV? Don't let fulfillment throw away your tomorrow.
I think any spiritual experience that's worthwhile is not about ego and it will humble you in some way. And also, a Zen monk once said to me, 'If you're not laughing, then you're not getting it.'
If it's a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it's a failure. That is what I think.
If I died on the battlefield, then that was the way it was supposed to be.
Living in a zoo means it wasn't always sparkly dresses, but I would still dress up. I had this pink sparkly dress and fairy wings, and I'd put those on and then go and dance in the zoo.
Once the festival achieved a certain level of notoriety, then people began to come here with agendas that were not the same as ours. We can't do anything about that. We can't control that.
As for middle school, I had a really horrible era of style. I'd only play basketball with the boys during lunch, so I went through a phase of only wearing Lakers uniforms to school - that was cute! And then I kind of went through the Puma phase that everyone went through with the sweatsuits, which turned into Juicy Couture sweatsuits.
I never tire of the heroes that I knew growing up. The fun is not that much different from doing a television show: You're stuck with a certain set of rules, and then, rather than trying to break them, it's just trying to peel away and see what's underneath them. That to me is really fun.
I don't just post a video and then get offline. After uploading, I love to respond to comments, tweets, and messages about the video.
I don't think the disruptor and the business model of a disruptor necessarily is an indication of the topography of the future. If it did, you would say then that everyone will make high-end electric cars, when the answer is clearly no.
Mainstream cinema raises questions only to immediately provide an answer to them, so they can send the spectator home reassured. If we actually had those answers, then society would appear very different from what it is.
I don't plot with huge detail, just big moments and important elements, and then I have a structure but can fly by the seat of my pants when I write.
When you kill 500,000 children in order to impose your will on other countries, then you shouldn't be surprised when somebody responds in kind.
And as I grew older, I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London, and they said, well, no, we won't accept you, because we haven't a clue - you know - of the future of a so-called 'deaf' musician. And I just couldn't quite accept that.
