I love to fight. I love the preparation. I love to learn new things, always overcoming myself.
A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I'm learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, 'I can't go to Kmart. I can't take my kids to the haunted house.'
The prejudice is still there, but it's breaking down. You have writers like Michael Chabon and The Yiddish Policemen's Union. He's a writer who's determined to break down genre barriers. He's done amazing things.
I blame my work for a lot of things. I thank my work for a lot of things, too, but the trouble with being so passionately involved in work is that it becomes like a lover, like your partner, because it nourishes you.
Reading serves as a good escape when you're in the middle of doing crazy things.
I started experimenting with jewelry in my 20s - I was playing around with gemstones and painting things in gold leaf, and it turned into this huge obsession for me, so I launched my first jewelry line, Jade Inc.
On every job you do, you've got to raise your game. My ambition is to just get better and better every job you do - you should never stop trying to get better. You have to teach yourself new things - I don't think you necessarily learn them from other people because you have your own style of doing things, but hopefully you get better.
One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we do start back a little ways, but if we can be twice as good, somehow we can escape history and heritage and legacy.
I was raised as a Calvinist, which is doctrine-driven. And though there are many things wrong with Calvinism, you are at least encouraged to argue about things.
There was a time when I was fighting with the decision as to whether or not a Hasidic man could go out and have a music career in the world and be involved in pop culture. For me, I was able to bring those two things together for quite some time.
I love meeting people who've read my books. The prime reason to be on the planet is to make things I can show to other people: paintings, books, movies.
Players playing with a lot of confidence can achieve great things.
I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.
Early on, after gay liberation, there was an almost Stalinist pressure from gay critics and even gay readers to write about positive role models. We were never supposed to write negative things about gays, or else we were seen as collaborating with the enemy.
Making a film is like making a mixtape. You're collecting all this stuff and putting your favorite stuff into it: you have actors that you like, characters that you're interested in, moments you want to explore, themes you want to deal with, music that you want to put in. It's a pastiche of all these things that deal with how you see the world.
As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.
I like to write about things that don't reflect exactly on my life.
People are very curious and have written a lot of things about me. Right or not. I never comment on those things, because it's not much of my thing to comment on everything that's written about me.
Customers want new things, and the way that they get them isn't written in stone.
I don't spend any time thinking about my place in history, ever. If people say I changed things, it's nice, and I take it - but if I could give it to a charity it would be useful. I really believe now that my only job in life is to achieve a state of comfort and happiness.
I like inventing things when I write rather than autobiography.
I've worked with multiple directors throughout the 'Saw' series with a lot of conversations as they bring their particular installment to the screen. If I've been able to do anything throughout the course of these films, it's been to help shape dialogue and to try to make things as delicate and as intelligent as I can.
I'm hoping that maybe I'll start getting a reputation for being a guy who can be pretty versatile. That's the challenge and the fun of being an actor. I love getting to play and do different things.
I learn an amazing amount from watching television and movies because if you watch things that really work and don't work, it teaches you so much about what you do for your own craft. I think that if you're auditioning for a show, you need to know the world of the show, or you can't represent it very well.
When you have kids, they are the consistent things in your life. They don't change no matter what's going on. They love you. They are more honest than anybody will be.
I would like to say that I'm a walking poster board for feminism and women's liberation, but there are things that I do in my life that deeply, deeply fall short of being a statement for being a strong woman. I am flawed as much as anyone else.
My wife speaks very good French. She said she would miss lots of things in the U.S., but we can't live there if Trump's president.
I do so many things. Like when I was younger, if I drove past a house that I didn't want to live in, I'd hold my breath. Driving around somewhere like Slough I'd go blue in the face.
There are a lot of things you can say about the Bush tax cuts, but you can't say they didn't work.
In a world where irony reigns, where you have to separate, protect and laugh at anything that is honest or has an emotional charge, I bet for catharsis. I like to invest emotionally in things. And catharsis, when it touches the emotional vein, can open the doors of even those who protect themselves.
One of the very, very exciting things I have found here in L.A. is that no one talks to you about being Scottish. Whereas, if you are in London and you are trying to put films together and be a film-maker, there is a kind of unspoken sense that, if you are Scottish, you have something to overcome or else you cannot really do that project.
We've gotten so good at growing food that we've gone, in a few generations, from nearly half of Americans living on farms to 2 percent. We no longer think about how the wonderful things in the grocery store got there, and we'd like to go back to what we think is a more natural way.
I never think of the reader. I am curious about things; I need to find out, so off I go.
I often think about the many remarkable things that my personal computer can do which I never ask it to do. I probably use a small fraction of its capabilities. I often wonder if the same dynamic occurs with our capacity for creativity.
The world's been pretty good at coming up with new ways of doing things.
The two things I've been told most often since my career took off - by taxi drivers, lifelong friends and everyone in between - have been, 'Don't ever change, Margot' and 'You can't do that anymore, Margot.'
