I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work.
When I reflect on how things have changed, I can't help but laugh.
When I'm on stage, it's a little world I've created where I'm sort of the thing, so I have total control over everything that happens. When we're improvising, I'm with someone I totally trust. I know things are going to work out. I don't have those guarantees in life. There are no consequences on stage.
It's always easiest for me as a writer if I know I have a great ending. It can make everything else work. If you don't have a good ending, it's the hardest things in the world to come up with one. I always loved the ending of 'The Kite Runner,' and the scenes that are most faithful to the book are the last few scenes.
I'd far rather talk about players. They are the people who make things happen.
I have a love for colorful things. I'm a fashion maximalist. I come from the school of people who look at the decoration in Marie Antoinette's bedroom, and think 'Why so reserved?'
You look at things you enjoy in your life, but much more important is what you can do to make the world a better place.
'The Luminaries' is such a different book to 'The Rehearsal.' There are only a couple of things that link the two books: there's a certain preoccupation with looking at relationships from the outside, being shut out of human intimacy; and then there's patterning.
China is doing lots of things right. It's investing in education and R&D, it's opening up, it's more cosmopolitan than it's ever been. I think it's very likely that China will continue to explode economically and certainly become a superpower.
I am a geek in terms of, I love 'Close Encounters' and I love 'Star Wars,' but other things... 'Doctor Who,' I don't really care about at all, I couldn't give a fig about it.
I find myself enjoying a deeper love than I ever imagined was possible in the form of my daughter and certainly in the union with my wife. It makes everything else, including work, which is one of the things I'm most passionate about, pale by comparison.
For a long time growing up, I thought that everything happens for a reason and it's kind of already written. But as I've grown and learned various things, I think that the most important moment is the one that you're in, and that's the only moment that matters, that you can really control. The future is unknown, and the past is history.
Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested.
I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning to design and build these sorts of things.
I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.
I used to be really fat, but now I'm not. I used to have hair, but now I don't. I used to be able to see without corrective lenses, but now I can't. One of these this is exacerbated by the fact that I'm an editor. One of these things is true despite the fact that I'm an editor. One of them has nothing to do with me being an editor.
One of the things that's pretty unique about nu shu, when you look especially at these old letters and stories that have been saved, is that there are certain lines that are very standard that are used again and again. It's almost like a formula in a sense, so that these certain lines come up again and again.
What they call 'alt-comedy' now is basically what comedy was like in the '80s. People tried different things, and everybody went to the clubs; there was no other place. Then somehow, the clubs became infiltrated by Dice Clay and Carrot Top types.
In the 1960s, you could eat anything you wanted, and of course, people were smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, and there was no talk about fat and anything like that, and butter and cream were rife. Those were lovely days for gastronomy, I must say.
Life is not a matter of place, things or comfort; rather, it concerns the basic human rights of family, country, justice and human dignity.
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?
I think there is a difference between Slate and Salon. I think we both serve important functions on the Internet. As more and more Websites disappear, I'm thankful Slate is still around because it makes things less lonely.
I don't think anyone can do any character that doesn't have at least some ounce of themselves in it. You are who you are, and your brain is drawing on things that you've experienced.
I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence.
I hope to always be doing some low budget things.
It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die.
We can do things that we never could before. Stop-motion lets you build tiny little worlds, and computers make that world even more believable.
The variety of training is a major selling point of triathlon. Different sports, different venues means it's always interesting, and you can always switch things round if the weather messes your plans up.
My wife, she still gives me a hard time, and says I hunt too much or I like to play golf too much. And she's probably right, but it sure beats some of the things I used to do.
We inhabit an obscure planet, in an obscure galaxy, around an obscure sun, but on the other hand, modern human society represents one of the most complex things we know.
When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.
I try to write catchy hooks but, at the same time, things that mean something that will provoke thought.
People are composed of many things, and in my work, what influences me is the complexity of people - the chiaroscuro of dark and light. When I play a strong guy, I try to find, where is he weak? And, conversely, when I play a weak guy, where is he strong?
Multi-touch sensing was designed to allow nontechies to do masterful things while allowing power users to be even more virtuosic.
You've got to keep things flying.
