Music is very similar to comedy: It's all about texture, timing, context, vocabulary, performance. When someone's onstage doing a solo, essentially it's the same thing as what a comedian does. They're in the moment. They're listening.
If people can find something that they love about themselves after going to one of my shows, then I am so addicted to that feeling. It's the most gratifying thing on earth.
When you're making TV, the last thing you want to do is watch TV. It's too much.
I'm certainly aware of the fans. I'm always hoping that what I'm doing is something they'll like, because I do appreciate them. But, no, when I get into the studio, it's all about what I like. It's the same thing that led me to the possibility of making that first Boston album, which was to divorce myself from all other influences.
I think Hitchcock had a thing about hills: think of the house on the hill in 'Psycho.' Then, in 'Vertigo,' Scottie is forever traversing the city, going downhill all the time as he goes deeper and deeper into himself. It's as if Hitchcock is using San Francisco as a psychological map.
In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.
Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.
I would want the British reader to feel that religion in America isn't an absurd thing - a sign of a pin head athwart a gigantic body.
There is no such thing as several Romanias, but only politicians who divide Romania depending on the interests of their parties and their clout.
We had this thing at Stanford called the 'Campus Loop,' and then we had another run called 'The Dish,' and you'd run up to this giant satellite dish, which was probably extremely unhealthy. I would do those two runs, and I just found it so therapeutic. My girlfriends and I would have these great conversations about guys and school and life.
I trained like an animal, but the thing is focus and concentration. When the bell rings it's like when the little red light goes on over the camera. And I can usually nail my lines on the first or second take because I'm right there.
As an online journalist, newswire journalist, newspaper writer, I wrote every day. My whole thing was, 'I have to write and report and write every day.' That was my thing.
For a novelist, the great thing about the Stone Age people is that we know virtually nothing about their beliefs - which means that I get to make it up! But it's still got to be plausible.
Well, one thing's very clear, that terrorism isn't just a threat which is external to Western countries. It's not simply a foreign menace that comes from overseas to strike our cities. It can and it does, as we now know, come from within our own countries and from inside our own populations.
The funny thing about me that most people never really understand is that, at heart, I'm really a jock.
If you are going to be serving a living thing, you have to honor that living thing with some kind of care and thought and preparation to rationalize the taking of that life in some way. Where if you're just grinding up hamburger at McDonald's, I see that as a bit of an affront to living things.
One thing that I had to remember in my personal journey in the music industry and coming up in the music industry was how many times I was told no. I was signed, I was dropped, I was signed, and I was put on a shelf.
I think doing variations on a classical theme is a dangerous thing to do.
If you do too much acting in a lead part in a feature film where you're 40 ft. high, it's rather unattractive. You can see the acting. And it's actually the right thing to do to bring as much of yourself, I believe, to the part as you possibly can - to minimize the amount of theatrical stuff that you need to do.
For me to be pompous is the most horrible thing in the world. It's like putting a wall around you. It screws you up. You'd better be willing to change your views or adapt and be modern.
Parties are not my thing; I keep it low-key.
The thing with me is, I'm both untidy and I hate mess. But I'm not untidy in communal spaces, like living rooms. My bedroom is havoc.
My views on music, and life in general, are completely out of step with everything that's going on. I've always been out of step. The only thing that interests me is history, reviewing the past and making something out of it.
Got through it without fluffing, that's the main thing any actor can hope for.
Oprah's got good politics, she's got a good heart, and she'll have us all up Jazzercising at six in the morning. This cannot be a bad thing, and reading a book while we're Jazzercising. So America would be better off if Oprah were president.
You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say.
While a lot of what is on Facebook is a better amalgam of what AOL, Yahoo, Amazon, and other Web pioneers introduced long ago, with a nice dash of connection and really identified community, this kind of thing is not a new idea.
The business models in enterprise have changed pretty dramatically. A huge problem with enterprise software traditionally has been usually you sell to the customer and then they adopt the technology. The great thing about 'freemium' and the new way enterprise software is being sold is you get to try it first and then buy it.
The first thing you have to do is accept that decay sets in and there's nothing you can do about it.
I really just love reading. It's my favorite thing, performing my poems live. Reading by reading, I just kind of follow my nose.
The only thing that being killed off on 'Graceland' helped me with on 'Game of Thrones' is that it made me available to actually do the job.
If there's an inkling of abuse, I have to move on. Even jealousy - seems cute it first, but if they're getting in my head, it's not right for me. It's okay to be alone. It's okay to be single. The right thing will come along.
You could play the blues like it was a lonesome thing - it was a feeling. The blues is nothing but a story... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?
People are very curious and have written a lot of things about me. Right or not. I never comment on those things, because it's not much of my thing to comment on everything that's written about me.
I know that on trade and on enforcement and rules of origin, on autos, on issues like taxation, on outsourcing of jobs, I know that - and on Wall Street reform, Hillary Clinton's going to do the right thing.
Dancers know how to move their arms and their hands. But I don't know the first thing about how to move my arms and hands gracefully.
