I think the melody is the first time I hear in a song and if I like the melody, then I'll pay closer attention to the lyrics.
There's no chivalry in culture any more. Sometimes you meet someone who everyone says is polite and you're like, 'Wow,' but then it's like, 'Hang on, isn't everyone supposed to be polite?'
My songs are really never titled. Sometimes I call it one thing. then I change it.
You know how you get close to something you want and then you start doing things to ensure that you don't quite get it? I did a lot of that.
You find out in life that people really like you funny. So what do you give 'em? Humor. And then if you show them the other side, they don't like you as much. I find, too, that I can hide behind the idiot's mask being funny, and you never see the sorrow or the pain.
The truth is I made a few good movies in the '50s, then went into freefall.
There's nothing like sitting in a completely quiet room, and then the strings start up. It's like when you go to the cinema - the first two or three minutes of any film are amazing. Because the screen is so big. The scale. Directors can pretty much do anything for those first few minutes.
If you don't do the suspense correctly, then your jump scares are not going to work.
I was a kid who did a kid show. Then I went away and raised my child, and the world has never met me as an adult.
I don't want to look exactly the same in everything I do. And if I'm not identifiable, then that can be a blessing or a curse. But I'm fine with it. Because at the end of the day, I'm still working, and I'm enjoying what I do.
At that moment of realization I knew that I had been blind because I had wished not to see; it was only then that I realised, at last, that all these dead men, French and Germans, were brothers, and I was the brother of them all.
If physical power be the fountain of law, then law and force are synonymous terms. Or, perhaps, rather, law would be the result of a combination of will and force; of will, united with a physical power sufficient to compel obedience to it, but not necessarily having any moral character whatever.
Anybody that's asked, I've counseled that they not expand Medicaid eligibility. I've been critical of any expansion because you know what Washington does. It promises something for a finite period of time, and then it leaves you on the hook.
It just goes to show, if you remain focused and you have a dream and you have a desire to do something, then no matter what gets in your way, you can never lose hope. It's possible.
I have enough drama in my career, and then always playing dramatic roles and storylines... I like to lead a very low profile.
You can say whatever you want about me, I'm not really bothered. But when it starts to upset people I care about or I hear about it from my mum, then that's a problem.
I think meeting someone like, meeting Sam Shepard, that was someone who was kind of important for me, because I'd read so much of his work and watched him as an actor since I was a kid, then being on set doing a scene with him and thinking, 'This is really surreal.'
If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.
You want to work with good people. When you're working with good people, it frees you up. There's nothing worse, as an actor, to show up and then feel like you have to protect yourself somehow because you don't feel like you're in good hands.
If somebody doesn't want to cook at home or has more family members than they have room for, then it's great to be in a city that's got restaurants that are actually busy on the holidays.
I think certainly if I'd started getting published when I was in my early twenties, I was quite sheltered then and didn't know anything much about the world. I hadn't had any direct experience of how the world works.
I would say to anyone starting out that if their priority in life is happiness, then don't be a musician.
I'm quite private. And I never wanted to be the biggest star in the world, really. So in that sense I've got a good balance of doing great shows, of making an appearance every now and then and writing music, and I don't really have to do much else.
Sometimes you have to lie to yourself to get through the criticism, and then you're in your closet crying. It's been like that for me a couple of times, but I only want to learn from those things.
I think of all media, television is the most powerful when it comes to selling books, because when you have a feature film, yeah, there's a rush. But then after that month is over and the movie goes out of release, that's it.
Everything seems fine until you're about 40. Then something is definitely beginning to go wrong. And you look in the mirror with your old habit of thinking, 'While I accept that everyone grows old and dies, it's a funny thing, but I'm an exception to that rule.'
Of course, eating broccoli raw, nutritionally and aesthetically speaking, is no doubt the best way of all. Raw broccoli makes a delectable salad when sliced into thin strips on a mandolin, marinated in lemon-mustard vinaigrette, then tossed with toasted pecans or hazelnuts, halved cherry tomatoes, and fresh minced basil.
If people are being upstanding citizens of the Republic, then you have to widen the net to incarcerate them. This explains why America's prisons are full of nonviolent offenders - a perfect example of American exceptionalism.
I would say if you are having a tough time in your life, then going to a club and getting laughs, it does make you feel better for that hour and a half show. It gets your mind off of it.
If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.
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.
The only way to know how much is enough, is to do too much, and then back up.
Often, some people dress something up to make it sound scientific, use scientific words, call themselves doctor something-or-other, and then you look them up, and they're trying to make it sound like something it's not. There's this entire field that's adding the word 'quantum' to everything. It doesn't even make sense in that context.
Watch over your child, as it struggles for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see your wife follow the child to that outermost verge, beside herself for anxiety and sleeplessness, - then love will teach you that life comes first.
You can't be the vulnerable, transparent, raw person required to be an artist, and then cover that stuff up and meet the world with some kind of armor on. It just doesn't go.
My mother and father definitely encouraged me. People used to tell my mom that I should be in commercials, and then everything kicked off from there, and my first gig was some print work.
