I love writing plays because they are living, fluid things that are energised by the producer, designers, musicians, actors and audience.
People like scary stories. There's a fascination with fear themes, and we want to face those things in a weird, subconscious way.
What you don't do, if you're an adult, is decide that you're going to budget things through a sequester. What does that word have to do with budgeting? It's like if you have a family budget and go, 'We really don't know what to take out economically from the budget, so we're going to whack out protein for this week.'
One of the first things that I did was, I got myself a publicist as soon as 'Maria Full of Grace' premiered in July, so that I could go and meet people that I wanted to meet: the writers and the directors and the people that are doing things.
The thing I like about singing duets is that I get things out of my voice I never get singing by myself.
Our Heavenly Father does bless us when we show our love for Him in all things.
The world is slowly evolving into a place where the things that we have seen as being taboo are starting to open up a bit more.
I feel deeply my responsibility to teach sacred things. I am so aware that the world is changing and will be vastly different from the one I have known. Values have shifted. Basic decency and respect for good things are eroding.
One of the things I strive for is realism. I need to be as real as possible in the dilemmas my characters face.
I write about what I know: teenage dating, overly charged sexuality, all the things that make you uncomfortable.
I know people who are twice as creative as I am, twice as smart, but they didn't do anything because they feared going into a room and opening their mouths. My parents told me to truly accomplish things in my life, there would be times I would have to stand alone. It may be scary, but that's what it requires.
One of the odd things about being a writer is that you never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, 'Right. Now I understand how this is done.'
I hope we can see African American characters as the diva, as the villain, and also as the praying mother. We are all of those things. We tended to only be the best friend or the neighbor in everybody's sitcom.
Mostly I have to try to censor myself so as not to write things that will hurt other people, or that will go too far.
Remember the movie 'The Matrix,' where virtual information popped up to help inform physical day-to-day reality? Such things won't always be the stuff of Hollywood. If the Internet is accessible via contact lenses, biographies will appear next to the faces of the people we talk to, and we will see subtitles if they speak a foreign language.
My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.'
The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, 'I'm not interested,' or you're unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don't understand that, and I think it's rude. You're at Grandma's house, you eat what Grandma serves you.
I was always incredibly driven and found it impossible to relax. I felt that if I slacked off for a minute to enjoy myself, then so many things would be missed.
Your characters can do the worst things on Earth - cut to a happy baby, it ends up being OK.
I made odd noises as a child. Just did weird things, like turn off light switches twice. I think my parents thought I had Tourette's syndrome.
I have a lot of Breton striped top and silk shirts that always feel good. I also like things with a masculine edge and dislike anything too girly.
Always trying new things is always more fun, and it can be scary, but it's always more fun in the end.
Good students are good at all things.
We're at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we're still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity... Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That's boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don't exist.
Men think we can't do two things at once. They can't, but we can. Women are more resilient.
It's strange: I've done so many things up until I did 'Obvious Child,' including writing children's books and making 'Marcel the Shell.' To me, the through-line is incredibly clear: it all comes from wanting to be connected to my own inner voice and not wanting to be on somebody else's agenda if that means that I can't be myself.
Among other things, I use a Samsung mobile phone, a very bad quality video camera, and an old Olympus with extremely bad Sigma lenses.
I always say that women are very strong and men are powerful. But beauty gives you both strength and power. I never think of it. It's just one of those natural things. It's the only thing I know how to do.
I hate how things must be classified. How this is applied to musicians implies that they somehow contrive their products and have studied the demographics of the audience.
I was taught from a very early age that it was probably the most American thing you can do is to question what's going on and to try to fix things that you see that aren't right. I believed that as a young person, and I believe that today.
I have written some poetry and two prose books about baseball, but if I had been a rich man, I probably would not have written many of the magazine essays that I have had to do. But, needing to write magazine essays to support myself, I looked to things that I cared about and wanted to write about, and certainly baseball was one of them.
Many things influence a person's eating habits. Knowledge of what is considered healthy and what is not would be one, but I doubt it would make it to the top of the list.
There are not two sides to a story when one side is a lie. Journalists - and the rest of us - must stop giving equal time to things that don't have an opposing side.
It is, of course, true that I have given priority to the settling of the problem of security and the problem of Irian Barat, although I knew that in order to do these things, almost three-quarters of our national product had to be spent.
I always figure from the cradle to the grave, we all have our individual journeys, and maybe my journey was a positive one and I accomplished certain things without stepping on too many toes.
One of our things is that money follows; it does not lead. So we want people that are fired up and passionate about their mission... and people that aren't so married to spreadsheets and thinking that kind of voodoo controls the future. Because it doesn't.
