As a songwriter, you tend to develop your own style, your own technique, based around what it is you're trying to write and perform, in terms of your own music. So a way of evolving a guitar style as a songwriter is much easier, I think, than developing a true style of your own just from listening to music or playing other people's music.
Why should I crowd the world with my opinions? Live and let live. That's it. Let people have their own opinions, and you just keep yours to yourself. There are too many opinions - some unnecessary, some great, some ridiculously stupid - so I think I rather not say anything and keep my opinions to myself.
If my grandchildren were to look at me and say, 'You were aware species were disappearing and you did nothing, you said nothing', that I think is culpable. I don't know how much more they expect me to be doing, I'd better ask them.
In the past, the U.S. was the centre of the world, where everything was happening. I think my stories have always sought to question this, maybe even criticise it.
I think one of the reasons that I got so good at it, as somebody making radio stories, is that on the radio I can actually - I can understand what's happening in the interview and can make a connection in a way that makes sense.
Our job as artists is to reflect the ills of society sometimes and to find a truth in that, and I think you can't start the healing process until you recognize the truth and all of its ugly warts and all.
I don't think I ever wanted fame.
As for pineapple, it's far more versatile than you might think, and certainly merits wider use than in Hawaiian pizzas and pina coladas and on cheesy cocktail sticks.
I think it's always a really stupid thing to base your achievement on someone else. I just want to base it on myself... do something that I can be proud of, and then I'll be happy.
When I think of myself, I think of Toronto. My music would never sound the way it does if it weren't for Toronto.
I think we have gotten to a point as Americans, unfortunately, where we take for granted the magic that life brings and that life is really special and every life matters. We tend to go through life but not take the moment to step back and remember you are here, right now, for a very finite amount of time.
I try not to think about the person, just their tactics, their weaknesses and strengths. I play against the ball.
Everybody loves 'The Wire,' and I think it's okay, but in the end it's just a police series.
For me it's just amazing that I grew up watching Tim Duncan and KG and Kobe and Paul Pierce, Allen Iverson and all those guys and now it's like, 'Man, I can't believe they actually got old.' It's like they actually walked away. It's crazy to think about, but the game has to keep moving.
People think I'm smart because Flickr was successful. I'm lucky. Maybe I'm smart, too. But, I'm lucky.
I've enjoyed appearing in Atlantic City. East Coast audiences are a bit brighter than Las Vegas audiences. I think most entertainers will tell you the same thing. The East Coast audiences are more perceptive - especially when it comes to a performer with a theatrical background.
Most artists don't understand what they do, and I don't think we have to. Other people do that better - they understand what I do better than I do!
I think that's one of the great things about the Pittsburgh Steelers - we're not a big free-agent team. We build guys up through our system to have a better understanding of our defense.
Growing up, I would have to watch the other children and learn from my mistakes. I would have to push myself to overcome the things most people don't have to think about. Brushing my teeth was very difficult because of the noise of the brush.
I think that's part of the fun of being an actor - you get to not be normal all of the time.
I think that there will always be artists out there who think they need to sign a major label deal in order to be successful. And that machine is what is going to work for them - there's tons of examples of pop stars who need that machine.
I thought I'd be doing theater, really. That's all I had experience with growing up. I mean, I saw movies and television, but I don't think I really connected at a young age that that was acting, that that was part of the profession.
People don't get it; they think I'm rich. I'm not! I have no money.
The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.
I think the only positive thing that came from Uruguay's dictatorship was the spread of Montevideo natives around the world, and I continued writing about them from my various places of exile.
I wasn't that good at science, and I gave up on math long before I should have. I like to think if I were in school today that would be different.
People think that young people don't care about things, but I think they do care; they just aren't super interested in conforming to what older people think are the right way to do things.
A lot of people who voted for Barack Obama expected and were led to expect something new in politics: a new tone of political discourse in Washington. And I think - I think they're disappointed, because Barack Obama is not a new kind of politician. In fact, he's an old Chicago politician.
I don't look in the mirror and think that I have flaws. I actually look in the mirror and see me. I see a lot of different characters and a lot of different things.
I love playing a role where I think I'm right and then you learn you're not. And it's what you do with that information.
For kind of sophisticated art I'm interested in, the larger structural rebuke has to be so subtle that it has to be distributed at an almost sub-atomic level. Otherwise, you fall into the kind of preachy, moralistic fable that I don't think makes for good literature.
Everything that we love will, at some point, be taken away from us. If I think about everyone I love eventually being taken away from me by death, or simply by getting lost from each other in the world, it makes me value them much more now.
I don't think LVMH will want to significantly change the strategy of Loro Piana, and I don't think that they would have bought it otherwise.
I think Mozart's operas 'The Marriage of Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni' are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.
I hear the way people talk about the children of famous people. They're not treated very well. The presumptions are usually quite awful. So I tried to establish myself with a couple of movies. After 'Juno' I thought: 'I think I've defined myself enough as my own director that I'd love to work with my father.'
I'm 21 years old and I think that I've got a lot of perspective in life.
