I'm a big believer in to-do lists. I think of five things in the shower. I set goals and get my work done, but I have to plan for fun things, too. I'm always thinking about what will make my family happier. So I set up playdates and trips.
One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength - and that is more important than anything.
In some ways any film that you do has an artificiality about it. Even when you're doing the most kitchen-sinky, gritty, realistic scene you've still got 50 people standing around watching you with cameras and lights and things.
The jobs I enjoy most are the ones where I never feel like I'm performing. I'm just feeling things.
Women are good at emotional things. We are emotional people. It is much harder to be cold and unemotional.
People always ask me, 'What is it that you regret?' And I say, 'nothing, because I could not buy what I've learned.' And I apply those things to my life I learn. And hopefully, hopefully it helps me to be a better human in the future and make better choices.
It's a simple quality of human nature that people prefer to choose to do things rather than be ordered to do them. In fact, as soon as you tell me I have to do something - give a speech, attend a banquet, go to Cannes - I immediately start looking for ways to avoid doing it.
What is taught in schools generally in the West Indies is that if something is your thing, it's better than anybody else's because it's yours. It's extremely provincial and also damaging. You prevent people from learning things. The biggest absurdity would be, 'Don't read Shakespeare because he was white.'
I never suffered from the absence of a father. On the contrary, as a child I was more inclined to see men as a disturbing factor. It made things difficult for me when I started working as a director.
I always tell my employees, the busier it gets, the slower you should cook. When you run around like a crazy person, that's when things go wrong.
I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the schools, but I saw no alternative but to taking it on myself. I could think of a lot of cheerier things I'd rather be doing than analyzing George Washington and Aaron Burr. But it came to pass, that was my job, so I did it.
Voters want conflicting things. They want a lot of government spending, but they don't want higher taxes.
In a way, digital cameras were like very early personal computers such as the Commodore 64 - clunky and able to do only a few things.
I want to work on projects that I feel passionate about and do things that are fun and challenging. I would love to do a live musical. I'm not interested in doing the same thing over and over or the fame and exposure that comes with it. When people keep doing that, they just end up doing the same dumb stuff again and again.
I'm not aware of a cadence when writing, but I hear it after. I write in longhand, and that helps. You're closer to it, and you have to cross things out. You put a line through it, but it's still there. You might need it. When you erase a line on a computer, it's gone forever.
I've done a lot of stupid things, but in most cases I can't complain about the outcomes.
I believe being a good senator requires two things. Number one, acumen. Number two, interest.
Five years from now I'm probably going to look back on the things I'm doing and cringe.
If we want to impact hundreds - or millions - of people, we have to do things differently. If we look at the problem as an infrastructural problem, we cannot make an impact because it requires a lot of effort. But when we convert this problem into a knowledge problem, suddenly the problem is manageable.
With 'Invisible,' I didn't want to create something that requires you to watch it more than once; I don't even expect people to watch it more than once per se. I just wanted you to have the experience and knowing that if you watch it a second time, it would be different because you would see different things.
For me, I skate as masculine as I can. I'm not a big strong guy. I'm not interested in fighting or throwing punches or balling my hands in fists all day. I'm not interested in guns, I'm not interested in football or stereotypically masculine things, so I'm going to skate in a fashion that is manly for Johnny Weir.
I'm proud of the fact that I made my way in life very rigorously. I was a bit too stubborn when it came to certain things, which was unnecessary, like getting independent from and leaving Germany.
One of the strangest things that used to happen at half time was that you'd come in, and you would have to sit down and be quiet. Get your drink, your energy bars or whatever, and sit down.
On both 'The Bachelor' and 'The Bachelorette,' it seems like proposing marriage is equivalent to saying, 'Let's date.' Everyone knows those aren't the same things.
There's the constant concern with what happens to you when you die. Every society thinks about that and makes things to deal with that.
I do endless chopping and preparing things. I really find that relaxing. I do a lot of thinking as I am chopping and cooking.
Happiness is a state of mind, you know. I don't think you are permanently happy. One is happy about certain things and not so happy about others.
If you're going to be married for a long time, I think you'll have a fair number of moments where you question things, no matter how good your marriage is.
As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.
Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.
Little kids grow up discovering the world that's shown to them and then when you become a teenager, it kind of shrinks a little bit. I think when you get past that point, one of the important things is that you see there is more to the world than yourself.
I'm not hugely technical with things, but I guess that the thing I use most is my iPhone, on a practical level.
Losing people is dark, but some things you just have to accept.
It's very, very exciting that it worked out in the end that we are actually detecting things and actually adding to the knowledge, through gravitational waves, of what goes on in the universe.
I am very fortunate to work with people I have seen on the screen so many times and admired, and they are in the public eye, and I have seen how they handle it. There are definitely ways to just keep on enjoying the profession and the work. Other people tell me that things are going to change.
Things like 'Lucky Man' were never written to even be a record, let alone a hit record.
