I always say, 'People first, then money, then things.'
I don't treasure things much - just people. And pets.
I am not very good at planning things, actually, but I believe that things happen when they need to and when they have to.
I sometimes worry that maybe it's better to be really good at one thing than be okay at a couple things.
I have no problem with bands using participant financing schemes like Kickstarter and such. I've said many times that I think they're part of the new way bands and their audience interact and they can be a fantastic resource, enabling bands to do things essentially in cooperation with their audience. It's pretty amazing, actually.
I am a small business owner; I'm in the agri-business. That's about as blind a trust as you can get. We trust in the Lord for rain and many other things.
Even in losing my mother, beautiful, amazing awakenings have happened within my family. Of course, losing her is not what you want. The things that happened after her death, she would be so just beside herself with joy that life turned out that way.
I don't have ADD, but I only like to pay attention to the things I like to pay attention to, and things like getting a TV and getting the cable working are beyond me, and so I let such things lapse, sometimes for years. This applies to keeping my apartment clean.
I've started working on a new album, I'm writing a new book... there are a lot of good things on the horizon.
I learned how to play guitar by playing along to Jane's Addiction records and Smashing Pumpkins records, things you can totally hear if you listen to my guitar.
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
We have to know that life cannot be changed by us. It will be changed. But not by us. We can only guide the things that can cause physical change.
I feel responsibility for a lot of things that I manage to touch.
I'm a fisherman who likes to observe and tell yarns, and so I told stories about things that I knew about.
I'm confident in who I am. I've come to a place in my life where I've accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That's just the way I've always tried to be. It didn't change when I became a star.
I am quite amazed how, when people earn lots of money, they think they have to spend it on things that give them access to the club constituted by the people who are in their tax bracket.
I think one of the most important things we can do for people is to expand opportunity - whether it's the opportunity to live a life free of discrimination or the opportunity to get a good job that provides a gateway to the middle class. I've dedicated my career to expanding opportunity, and it's proven incredibly rewarding.
I was an actor for a little bit. That's when I started to understand fiction - and that one of the great things about fiction is that you're dependent on the characters as much as they're dependent on you.
I do feel I have a hard time dealing with things being OK.
I think a lot of things get blown out of proportion in the media.
The thing I really like about Twitter is the speed with which information reaches me. You find out things from Twitter long before they're on the news. That, I think, is valuable.
I went through a really good-looking phase from birth to 9. And then things went crazy. I don't know what happened, but between 9 and 14 it was really, really rough. I didn't have a lot of friends. The only ones who were nice to me were the theater kids. And they were like, 'You can come and join us. No one likes us.'
I don't know why we have to put things in boxes of superlatives. That isolates them. Life is fluid, and the minute you start trying to put a line around something, it will deceive you and go away.
God wants to help us... He loves us... we are His children. But He will not force His help on us at any time. He sees us when we struggle and fight and complain our way through things. And I believe it breaks His heart, when all we have to do is ask Him for help.
I like to play the weirdos. I like to play the people that are hard to like. You get to say and do things that you would never say and do in real life.
One of the things I've discovered, thanks to the Japanese, is that you should enjoy yourself. In the old days, I used to think: 'Oh, never be satisfied, never admit to being happy.' But there's no curse in being happy.
When I was a younger actor, I was pretty much solely motivated by validation. I just wanted to be told I was good and handsome and a part of the gang. It was pretty simple animal-social stuff. I don't care as much about those things anymore.
Elton John can be a master of the sleight of hand. The arrangements make it seem like there are substantial melodies underneath the tracks - but almost nothing demands repeated listenings. Similarly, he always sounds like he's singing up a storm, but his voice glosses over the material, reducing most things to an uninteresting sameness.
I think it is important for children to read different things to find out about their emotions and other people's emotions. It is an enormous source of education and culture.
Weight issues, race issues will always be there and if you allow them to get to you and you allow them to affect you then yes they affect you. But my thing is I have so many other things to worry about I can't worry about other people's perception of me.
I have this natural want to... when things sound very easy and straightforward, something inside me always makes me want to take a left turn. If it comes to me and it's too simple, there has to be a more complicated route. I will complicate things like that at times.
I went to a soccer high school, and it was really different to being on 'Idol.' So I decided to quit school, and I put all my energy into music, and things started to happen.
Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.
I'd split up with a boyfriend and gone to Vermont to stare at my navel, and then 9/11 happened, and I spent days being scared of what was happening in the world. So I made a list of all the things I wanted to do, and at the top was adopt a baby. Nine months and two days later, I brought my daughter home.
Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.
In a weird way, I like to find the quirkiness in ordinary things. I like to find what is ordinary in quirky people.
