There is no such thing as an average person. They really are guidelines for people to grapple with the unknown, and we can always surprise expectations.
'Human Giant' was a kind of lightning in a bottle. A rare opportunity for us to write and create our own sort of thing, with very few restrictions.
Young men make great mistakes in life; for one thing, they idealize love too much.
Like most kids, you don't want to do what your folks want you to do. You've got your own thing.
I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women's rules.
I wasn't playing mind games with anybody, I just said what I said. I am responsible for it, but I wish everybody would fall asleep for that one and let me go out there and do my thing.
Retro looking stuff but a lot of these guys doing these shows are my age or younger. I was just disgusted. I hated being around that kind of thing. Not that it affected what I did because when it comes down to it I was doing my own show.
For me, writing a novel is more like digging a well than climbing a mountain - some heroic thing where I set out to conquer. I just sit quietly for a few years, and then it starts to become something.
The last thing I want to do is to write about real things. I am not interested in reality and in real human beings and their real day-to-day problems - I just want to say to them, 'Hold still, and I'm just going to unpack, see what's inside.'
The saddest thing in life is wasted talent and the choices you make will shape your life forever.
Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.
I don't get a whole lot out of the romance thing, but I realize girls do. So I'll go out of my way to make them feel romanced.
I feel very much aware of my mortality. I'm here, and then I'm not. It's the same thing with everything else: the movie comes out, and then it's gone. Everything is changing all the time, and I'm not going to stress out and spend my entire time chasing something that ultimately doesn't exist.
My general philosophy of playing bad guys, which I've sort of done, you know, half the time is, you know, very few people who we view as bad guys get out of bed and think, 'What evil, terrible thing am I going to do today?' Most people see their motivations as justified - as, you know, justifying whatever they do.
I try not to read best-dressed lists or anything like that. For every good thing, there will often be a not-so-nice thing people would say.
There's so much negative imagery of black fatherhood. I've got tons of friends that are doing the right thing by their kids, and doing the right thing as a father - and how come that's not as newsworthy?
I do think the patriotic thing to do is to critique my country. How else do you make a country better but by pointing out its flaws?
Family is the most important thing in life, period.
I was thinking of resigning since I did not want to be perceived as a man who did the president's bidding to save my job. I have had some time to think about it since. I think I did the right thing.
The game's the thing. That's why people tune in. They don't tune in to hear an announcer.
It would be nice to redefine ourselves - at the moment we are drowning in diversity. That's not a bad thing, its just going to take a while before we refocus.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
The great thing about The Clash of course is that they keep searching for answers beyond that.
The horrible thing about being me is that I have a very good eye about what people look like. Even me.
I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.
I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.
That's one of my favorite things about Twitter: You can tweak your feed into a fabulous novelty engine. That's only one thing you can do with it, but it's one of the things I find most entertaining about it.
I mean if you put all of your eggs in one basket, boy, and that thing blows up you've got a real problem.
The last thing you want to do, unless it's a very unusual situation, is to invest money.
Someday they may cure MS, that idiot thing. It gets in there and they can't get it out.
An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.
People talk about revelation, and say it has ceased; but what ignorance it bespeaks, when man knows not the least thing on earth without revelation.
The distinctive feature of my family was intolerance of sensitivity and emotion - 'Everything's great, it all has to be great all the time and why do you have to spoil it?' Whereas probably the most fundamental and important thing to me has been defending my right to tell the truth about how I feel.
Giving up even an ounce of precious freedom is a very serious thing to do.
The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.
I admire people who just do the right thing, not looking to screw people up. I love all people.
