I've been the best player on every team that I played on, so if I can't be the poster child of your team, then what else is it? It's got to be a black-white issue. Every white player I know who's the best player on their team is the poster child of that team.
Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.
When you're just an actor, you do your role, and then you're in your trailer. It's not as hands on as when you're directing. You live and breathe it.
I personally wouldn't want my second album to sound like my first; it might sound very rocky or hard rock - and that wouldn't be melancholy. So if people think my music is melancholic, then so be it. It's meant to be uplifting, and I'm just basically saying what needs to be said.
All of us want something in life, all of us have flaws, and all of us have strengths. So, I always try to discover those things in a character and then try to expose it in one way or another.
If you love what you do, then you always find the time.
I'm definitely trying to make songs that people can sing along to and remember. If you can recognize a chorus and leave with it in your head, it's usually a good sign. But then with the verses, I can get a little more free form. I don't really like to copy and paste things.
I think any time someone's dreams are crushed, there's the people who can fight to still try and fulfill those dreams and then there's the people who just give up.
The God that can only love something like this man. And from then on it was all downhill.
The government sends low-flying helicopters to chase the horses into corrals and then takes them from the plains of the American West to federal holding pens. The government claims it's to save the horses from starvation. Critics claim the real motive is to clear the land for cattle grazing. Critics also say the horses are brutally traumatized.
Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth.
In the real world, there's probably nothing more horrifying than racism. Living racism is a horrifying experience. And then, having to normalize it and internalize it.
I really can't describe what my stand-up is like - people see it and they say it's like that, or it's like this, and that's really up to them, that's fine, but I don't sit around all day analysing it. I just try and enjoy a show and interest myself because if I don't do that then I won't interest anybody else.
My whole background as a social worker has allowed me to understand human behavior in difficult situations. Working in Kenya, I see the most desperate situations - things I could never believe possible - and then have to try to find solutions.
I have a very small platform, and if I can use that to reach some kid who's teased for being effeminate or likes clothes, then I've done my job.
It scared me to death to think about improv, but I got hired for a year at Second City in Chicago, which made me nervous, but I found I could improvise. Then I was in a group called the Ace Trucking Company, which we'd do, like, a half hour set of material, then open up for improvisation.
I always believe a woman should have 5 non-negotiables that she should stick to when attracting a mate. If the guy does not have these five major things - then she should not give the guy a chance as she's wasting her time. The rest is up to the magic and wiggle room the universe gives.
If we fix our economic system and invest in the human capital of the poor, then we should welcome every new person born as a source of betterment for our world and all of us on it.
I went to grad school in San Francisco, and then left for New York City with my eye on Broadway. I had saved $5000, which seemed like a lot of money in my mind... until I realized it was going to take $2500 to get to New York and then the first and last month's rent.
We're living through a paradigm shift. People are going to look back at us and say, 'They used to cut people's legs off.' Then they'll just give an injection and the blood flow will be restored and the limb saved.
I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game - if I put everything into the fight business - then I would eventually run the fight business.
I used to get stuck trying to find the first sentence of a story, then I realised that it was often because I didn't know what problem a character was facing in the story. As soon as I did, I could have the character trying to do something about it or have the problem whack him between the eyes.
It's strange that we create tech and then we apply it to machines, when we could apply it to ourselves. Cars can now detect if something is behind them, but we don't have this ability. Why are we applying such a simple sense to a car when we could apply it to ourselves?
We watch a lot of Discovery Channel, shows like 'The Biggest Loser' and even 'Amazing Race.' You learn a lot about the world, it's fun and nobody's interested in beating anybody down. And then the opposite: I'm a huge fan of 'Survivor.'
To go to the synagogue with one's father on the Passover eve - is there in the world a greater pleasure than that? What is it worth to be dressed in new clothes from head to foot, and to show off before one's friends? Then the prayers themselves - the first Festival evening prayer and blessing.
My dad is a good role model for me, and then I had a high school coach that really helped me out when I was struggling and made a big difference in my life.
I went to drama school in Paris and started doing theatre with a friend. Then I moved into movies and slowly but surely I got roles.
I think there are some songs that stand the test of time better than others for sure. I think some songs go out of favour; I'll get sick of a song for a while, and I won't play it; then it'll make a comeback.
It's been the structure of my life: you scheme and plan and try and fail and try again and accumulate and lose and win back, and then you tell.
I don't hate pop music. I liked the Beatles, but then, I knew them.
I'll co-host 'TODAY' from Los Angeles Saturday morning and then make my way up to Merced for that evening's graduation ceremony. I'm still touching up my remarks, but my challenge to the Class of 2010 will be to break through the deafening and too often negative echo chamber of the digital era and become critical and independent thinkers.
If we cannot come together to pause, to respect our dead and the heroic lives of meaning they led, then ours is truly a civilization lost.
Since I was a kid, I always wanted to figure out how to make a bass line that was a pendulum - like, gravity would control it, and then you could make it play different notes.
See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
Progress is always relative: to the oppressed, it can only be viewed as an all or nothing deal - if oppression continues, even in a modified form, then the system must still be attacked until that injustice is eradicated.
'The Sopranos' gets praised as novelistic, but it follows the most banal of life patterns, showing the sheer tedium of being a mobster. It has dead spots, boring plotlines, weak episodes. Characters develop slowly, or don't. Like viewers, a gangster might get bored, fade out of the action, then come back to find none of his debts forgotten.
