The worst thing for a politician is to try and cling to power by every possible means, and focus only on that.
When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War.
I think the worst thing that can happen to a good actor is fame.
When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?
Here's the thing: I left Ion Storm and Eidos in the spring of 2004 frankly because I felt out of place at that company.
There's a million jokes about what's going on with Batman and Robin. It's a classic thing to call out the homoerotic nature of the men's adventure show.
Don't let anyone tell you your ideas are stupid or the thing you feel most passionate about 'won't work' - it's happened to me time and time again, and we find that if you push at what you think is interesting hard enough, you're probably right.
Being a woman has always been a powerful thing, where history has sometimes dictated otherwise, but I believe that a woman can be compassionate, sensitive, soft, kind.
The wonderful thing about theater as an art form is it's a purely empirical art form. It's all about what works. And every show, every production, is created anew right from the moment you go into the rehearsal hall.
This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.
Sometimes when you're doing fantasy, that's the most important thing, is to be a blank space, because the last thing you want to do ever as an actor is judge yourself or the character or the movie that you're in. You want to just play the moment as best you can. Juilliard helped me do that.
Geekiness is that feeling of overwhelming passion for that thing in life that you focus on. Whether it be a nephew's first few steps or the timbre in one's voice when discussing the latest Cohen brothers film.
Green synthetic practice mats are the worst thing for your golf game that I know of. You can hit six inches behind the ball and not even know it, because the ball still gets airborne. Practice nets are awful, too. Swing a weighted club instead.
The tough thing about radio is I've met a lot of people in it who like my music. But it's hard for them to figure out how to play what they like when there's somebody up above them yelling 'you have to play this.'
I could never really imagine myself doing one thing, and I'm pretty sure that I'll end up doing four or five different things. I want to be a Renaissance woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I want to just do everything.
Music is meant to be a beautiful thing.
There's nothing wrong with being proud of who you are. It's a wonderful thing.
Singing is the thing apart from my family that gives me the most joy in the world. I don't ever spend a day without singing.
As an actor you accept that you have to publicise what you do, but as for the whole personal life thing that people sometimes choose, no, that's not for me.
Nowadays, there are seven music directors in one film. I had never heard of such a thing before. If one of our old music directors was told to share a score with others, he would have left the assignment.
Okra is the closest thing to nylon I've ever eaten. It's like they bred cotton with a green bean. Okra, tastes like snot. The more you cook it, the more it turns into string.
There is such a thing as 'thanks-feeling' - feeling thankful. This ought to be the general, universal spirit of the Christian.
I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.
As an entrepreneur, I've come across countless articles and quotes proudly telling me that I should accept failure, smile, and keep my head up. In other words, I've been told to stay positive. The thing is, when you're forced to shut down a business and let really awesome people you care about go, staying positive is the last thing on your mind.
Think about multicellularity on this Earth. Every living thing originally came from bacteria. So, who do you think made up the rules for how to perform collective behaviors? It had to be the bacteria.
When I was 11 years old, I was a member of 'Press Pack,' which was a thing that would come out in 'The Sunday Times' in England. You'd write articles and send them off and would get a badge saying 'Official Press.' I was really excited about my badge.
Every single unfortunate thing that happens, including, for instance, the murder of my parents, I am responsible for. I am responsible for being the son of two people who got murdered. I didn't cause their murder. But if I'm suffering because of it, it's my karma that I have manifested in this lifetime in this particular set of circumstances.
The spooky thing is that two weeks before the Grammys, I wrote down my goals, and one of them was, 'To be on the top of the Billboard charts with a song I wrote and performed.' ... It's completely unheard of.
I'm usually very analytical when I'm prepping stuff: real into the head thing.
When I was a boy, the only thing which captivated me as much as music was the night sky.
I used to comfort myself with the idea of a book with serrated, detachable pages, so that you could read the thing the way it came and then shuffle the pages, like a giant deck of cards, and read the book in an entirely different order. It would be a different book, wouldn't it? It would be one of infinite books.
There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.
It's one thing to say, 'I don't like what you said to me and I find it rude and offensive,' but the moment you threaten violence in return, you've taken it to another level, where you lose whatever credibility you had.
For me, comedy is constantly presented as this fake casualness, like a guy just walked on stage going, 'This crazy thing happened to me the other day.' And he's in front of 3000 people, and he's acting like an everyman, and he's getting paid so much money.
I don't want to be labeled one thing. My main thing I care about is being able to create the things I want to do with my friends, whatever platform that is.
Standup is just dirtier, a far more risque kind of thing.
