I chose 'No. 1 Ladies' Detective,' or I'll say it chose me, and it was an absolute blessing, for the experience of being in Africa for seven months and learning so many different things, from languages to foods to greetings. On so many levels, it was an incredible experience.
The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.
People like 'Crank,' some people like 'Redemption.' I'm just happy to do things that satiate a different part of me, that test me a little bit.
I dream up things, and then I convince myself that they're possible.
To nurture the sort of relationships that will truly help propel you towards accomplishing great things, you need to forget transactional networking and focus on having in-depth conversations with fewer people about subjects you really care about.
An M.P. once suggested I be put in the Tower of London for saying derogatory things about the royals. There's no First Amendment in my country.
Winning and losing, that's never been my objective. It's my hope that in the fullness of time, the majority of the court will come to see things as I do.
Non-conformity has always been one of the great British virtues, and that includes non-conformity to things British.
I like simple things. I like being in my family in the South and playing petanque.
What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.
When I hear the word 'documentary,' I don't think certain things should be left out. You've got to keep it 100 percent as much as you can, unless your group has a meeting beforehand and says, 'Yo - don't say this, 'cause boom, boom, boom.' Other than that, it's a documentary so let's document, you know what I mean?
I can't imagine what it would be like to write in a relaxed state. I'm going to be writing some stories for my own interest. I want to experiment with different things and see if I can approach writing with much less control and in a better psychological state. It will be like breaking out of a straitjacket.
Sometimes I think we're exposed to things we shouldn't be exposed to too early. I think that sets the tone to a person's whole life. Trauma.
I honestly think that in five years time, television will be watched on computer screens anyway and you'll be doing multiple things. You'll be 'IMing' while you're watching a show and checking the news.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't really focus on more negativity. I'm a positive person, and I look at things in a positive way.
I would be on the 'anti-reality' show. I can't stand reality TV. I can tell you one that I absolutely would not be on, and that's 'Dancing With the Stars.' If you ever see me on that show, just please understand my family is starving to death, and things are really bad in the Church household.
We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We're inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, 'Gimme, gimme, gimme,' you will always be in short supply.
It's definitely one of those things when you decide to be an actor that it would be really cool to be in a Broadway show or a series regular on a hit show.
Bergman was courageous in choosing people to do things that they themselves might not expect to play.
Bill Clinton has done some incredibly reckless, irresponsible things as president. But his campaign to expand Medicare entitlements has to rank among the worst.
Your performance in the world is simply the result of the things you believe.
With the DVR, I was mostly writing about it as a good thing in giving us the choice of when and how to watch things. But there's what we lose in the bargain, which is the collective spectacle. 'Did you see Jay Leno last night?'
The great thing about having money is that you can actually just get on with your life and not have to think about paying the bills or crouch over 'The Wall Street Journal' or the 'Financial Times' and look at the stock figures and things like that. That bores me rigid.
When you are 25 or even 30, you can just do things. When you get to 35, things are different. Time is more precious to me now. I've got my priorities.
Certain things happened in the early church. Women who had never had any freedom suddenly have the ability to stand up and speak and be treated as equals within the life of the church.
It seems disrespectful to my parents who left... to hear their story over and over again which always ends with... 'and I'll never go back as long as anyone in the Castro family is in power.' Well, what happens if you can go back? Would you want to see things?
I'm always trying to make something that is impossible to film. Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.
Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary.
I would love to tell you that it's been absolutely perfect, that I've been a man that's been super Christian. But I've had mistakes, dumb things I've regretted, so it's not a perfect life. But it's one that has helped me make better decisions.
I saw this DJ playing music and saying things to the kids. They would answer him back, and I say, 'That's a great idea.'
We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.
You only live once. Trying to do the right thing for other people often doesn't work out, and you have to follow your own path in order to make things work out best for everyone.
The records are black boxes for me. Like, if you want to know who I am, my views, my perspective, things I love, things I hate, my convictions, my anthems. I've never let people's opinions affect the way I write.
I accomplished so many things, so early in my career.
An actor's only perception is of their character, and they're looking at one piece. A writer is looking at the entire story. They're going to see things that the writer didn't see because they're only looking through their lens.
I'm a relic, and things were a lot different when I was fifteen and sixteen. There were no cell phones, no laptops... I learned to type on an actual typewriter.
