I didn't intend to run for public office. I didn't really think about it.
For 'So Cold the River,' I'm actually working on adapting the book with Scott Silver, who was just nominated for an Oscar for 'The Fighter,' and who also wrote '8 Mile,' which I think is a terrific screenplay. The chance to work with Scott is a tremendous pleasure and I'm learning a lot.
I remember my first friend who got sick. It was 1981, and the disease was called the gay cancer. I don't think the word 'AIDS' came out until '84. I just remember it being terrifying as more people got sick. We didn't know how you could catch it, you heard all kinds of crazy things.
I never use nature as a starting point. I never abstract from nature; I never consciously think of nature when I paint.
You have to have your wits about you and think quickly on your feet.
Well, Bill, I don't think you're going to find many shy people that are in the political business.
I think who you are in school really sticks with you. I don't ever feel like the cool kid at the party, ever. It's like, 'Smile and be nice to everybody, because you were not invited to be here.'
I just think that most of the people are very close minded.
I really think that in the media world that we live in now, especially for writers, it has to be a conversation. With very few exceptions, it can't be this one-way, 'Here I am on the mountaintop preaching to all of you great unwashed readers in hopes of saving you.' It doesn't work that way.
I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.
When I go out to direct a film, every day we prepare too much, we think too much. Knowledge becomes a weight upon wisdom. You know, simple words lost in the quicksand of experience.
And I think women have come a very, very long way, but they have a long way to go.
I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.
Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech.
Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.
Art is collaboration: we are artists all over the world. I believe that people are always going to watch Hindi films... that's never going to die, but I think it's amazing that collaborations like that are happening.
Sometimes we all work so hard to overcome various things, and we are very cruel as a society and tough on people who we think aren't trying hard enough.
I wish I had more of the hero gene, but I don't think I'd be very good at playing one.
A lot of people call me a celebrity chef, but I don't think that I'm a celebrity. So I want to stay keeping just a chef. That's more comfortable.
Well, you know the old line - to be nominated is what it's all about. I think that I've done pretty well - I've had about 46, or 47 nominations from my movies, and my films have won about 12 awards in total, so I don't really have any complaints.
You can make it if you try, push a little harder, think a little deeper.
I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama.
During Breaking The Waves, I was on my own in a hotel room. I think I would have been impossible to live with. When you go home, you have to pretend to be the person you are at home.
I think if you work as an actress and are supposed as a character to be in love with some actor, then to some extent you do have to be in love with him.
I think that with a lot of hard work and dedication, I feel that I could be the best in the world. I'm still only 35 years old... I have a fresh start physically and mentally, and I feel that I can achieve my goal to be the best again.
I don't think we can go back to the old days. But I think that what the government needs to do is it needs to make sure that the pricing is fair, that you don't have monopolies out there, so that people don't have a chance to compete fairly.
I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.
We've complemented that with a second office to think about how we need to prepare ourselves for that period 10 or 15 or 20 years from now, by way of investment in our technology, our organization and our people.
I think one thing that does cause unhappiness is protracted anxiety and worry.
I think some authors suffer from a need to try to prove that they're clever and educated. I try not to suffer from that. I would rather sacrifice my own narrative in the exercise of writing a biography. So I'm not worried about whether I'm clever.
To morrow, I believe, is to be an eclipse of the sun, and I think it perfectly meet and proper that the sun in the heavens, and the glory of the Republic should both go into obscurity and darkness together.
Perhaps I am stronger than I think.
Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.
I was headed in the wrong direction. I didn't think I'd make it to 21. My Uncle Chuck saved my life. He was a graphic designer, and he gave me my first sketchbook. In the front, he wrote, 'Wear it like your underwear.'
Sketching in general - anywhere, not just in Gitmo, but in life, in the world - is a profoundly disruptive act. Because you're creating something when you're kind of expected to consume or sit passively. I've always sketched things as a way to get into them, whether it was a fancy nightclub or, you know, to have kids think I was cool, whatever.
So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.
