I'd like to be the commissioner of tennis, but do I want to get into politics? Sometimes I have delusions of grandeur that that would be an interesting, good thing. I'm talking about actual politics, like being a congressman, but then I see how unbelievably nasty it really is, and maybe I'm not quite knowledgeable enough to actually do it.
Frankly, most of my friends hold very different political beliefs. It's just a funny thing in this country that supposedly you can't sit down and have dinner and enjoy another person's company if you don't have the same beliefs. It's ridiculous.
You have to figure out ways to do things on your own. I do my own thing, and I don't pay much attention to what anyone else is doing.
The thing about me is that I don't judge my audience. I welcome. It is a big tent.
Fantasy fans are incredibly loyal and passionate. Other people don't want to be seen as passionate about things, they want to be cool and laconic. The great thing about fantasy fans is they'll really get behind a show.
Selling wine is all about sizing people up, and it takes a certain amount of chutzpah. The tableside bottle sell is a very funny thing - you take a look at the guy's blazer, what kind of shoes he's wearing, what kind of broad he's with. Is he trying to be a hero?
I think examples of free market transactions between peaceful people using Bitcoin and the Internet, I think it's a wonderful thing. It's going to make the world a better place.
The most important thing for Quentin and the most important thing for me is to make the best film possible.
We never think that our mothers will die. It was like suddenly an abyss opened at my feet - I was standing on nothing. It was the strangest thing. Her passing away ripped the solidity out of the world.
The thing is, when you see your old friends, you come face to face with yourself. I run into someone I've known for 40 or 50 years, and they're old. And I suddenly realize I'm old. It comes as an enormous shock to me.
In Porto, you have to eat francesinha. Translated, it means 'little French girl.' It's this sandwich of bread, ham, and a lot of beef sausage or other meats. Then you put melted cheese on the top. The special thing about it is the sauce. Each house makes a special secret sauce, and it's usually a bit spicy.
I think my role, I want to have a presence both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. So I can't say on one particular thing, so I'll just name them all. I'll be the jack of all trades and hopefully decent at one of them.
If I write a tune and people think it's nice, then that's fine by me, but I hate having to compete and promote the thing. I really don't like promotion.
The crazy thing is I got all of these shoes, and probably 80 percent of them I've never worn before. I've worn all the glasses. I sleep in them, bend them up a little bit. Glasses are on all the time except when I'm at practice or at work.
A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.
For me, the most exciting thing is to create good magic that's entertaining for an audience, and it would be lovely if a magician was fooled as well.
My thing is related to who I am as a person. The clothes are an extension of me. The music is an extension of me. All my businesses are part of the culture, so I have to stay true to whatever I'm feeling at the time, whatever direction I'm heading in. And hopefully, everyone follows.
It's very difficult, I would imagine, to distinguish father and daughter. And maybe some of it comes as I'm doing my thing and my father being a very strong political African figure for so many years. Whatever he does is almost like some kind of cloud on top.
The presidency of the United States is an incredible thing. You have an ability to effectuate change at the highest level.
I had a history for starting something and maybe getting halfway done. Then I'd see the same thing I was doing on the bestseller list! My ideas were right, but I hadn't done them fast enough.
It's just weird because videos games let you be something that you're not; so does acting, but it puts you in, like, a real-situation-type thing or something totally different.
If you made me the national commissioner of football, I'd tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we're going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.
It's flattering that there are lots of Internet fan sites about me. I'm a bit of a technophobe and I don't even own a laptop, but it's probably a good thing I'm not logged on, checking up on what everyone is saying about me.
I'll tell you one thing you can't do: you can't put your shoes on, then your socks on.
There's no such thing as holding back. I want to finish as soon as possible. The only time I did it was because he was a friend of mine. It was against Thales Leites. We went until the last round because he's a friend of mine, and I respect him.
In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.
The worst mistake you can make is underrating your enemy. Assuming that they're evil - I think it's a terrible thing to do.
The old process of social assimilation used to be mainly about English new money - generated in London, the mucky, brassy North or the colonies - buying those houses and restoring them, and doing the three-generation thing, mouldering into the landscape, and the 'community,' identifying with the place in a familiar way.
The last thing the theatre owners wanted was for people who spent $200 to see 'Les Miserables' to come out again and see the real miserable children of America, right there on the sidewalk.
Somebody says, 'Do a Tom Bodett, a folksy kind of thing,' and it sounds like something out of 'Hee Haw,' very insulting. They turn wry humor into disparaging sarcasm, and you get what amounts to insulting advertising.
A good way to take a baby step into the world of animal rights is to make a list of small things you can do to help your issue and work your way up to the big things. Make a promise to do one thing on your list each month.
It shone on everyone, whether they had a contract or not. The most democratic thing I'd ever seen, that California sunshine.
In the early '60s, it was still a fairly subversive thing, though, to say that you should take a painting, cut it, set it on fire, step on it, hammer nails into it.
If I did the structure and had this thing about a straight character, I would never have a sex scene to prove that he's heterosexual. If I have a gay character in a movie, I need to have a sex scene in it - just to prove that he's gay?
Being an actor, you go through this thing where you want to be the best, and I think, in life in general, you go through this thing where you want to be the best always, constantly.
If there's one thing that makes me cynical, it's optimists. They are just far too cynical about cynicism. If only they could see that cynics can be happy, constructive, even fun to hang out with, they might learn a thing or two.
