While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel.
My focus never wavered; I never accepted the film was not going to be finished.
The mistake I really learned from was in 2005, leading the Indianapolis 500. I had a decision whether or not to save enough fuel to finish the race - which meant slowing down - or going all-out for the win. I went conservative and saved enough fuel to go to the end but finished fourth.
We just finished making a record. Everybody wants to play shows, so we're going to after that.
What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
The biggest challenge was trying to convey the story of the making of a film that isn't finished yet - and which won't be finished until the third film, The Return of the King, reaches our cinemas towards the end of 2003!
The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.
There was a military police brigade with over 3,400 soldiers getting ready to go home because their mission - prisoner-of-war operations - was finished.
There are those people who try to change what you're doing. We don't like that. When we went into the studio for 'City of Evil,' we had 99 percent of the songs finished and ready to record.
By the time I finished comedy, I was really burnt out of it. I had had enough. I don't really have a strong desire to prove myself in that area, or to go back to it in any great way.
I just finished a novel called 'Exult,' by Joe Quirk, last night. It's about hang gliding. I liked his first book, too, 'The Ultimate Rush.' I now know that I never, ever, ever want to go hang gliding, so that's good.
I'm a working actor so I never really pick a film because of a genre, and I don't really turn them down because of genre. Anything that's unlike the picture I just finished is always more interesting.
I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood.
Hard Day's Night was one of those great films that will never happen again to anyone in their lifetime. UA were in profit before we'd even finished shooting - The advance sales on the album - the film was out before the album was out was more than it cost UA to make the film.
I finished my university, was part of NSD, and did full length plays on stages.
To be a good actor... it is necessary to have a firmly tempered soul, to be surprised at nothing, to resume each minute the laborious task that has barely just been finished.
I race historic muscle cars back in Australia, and that's my hobby. And I try to race home as soon as I've finished a movie but don't tell anyone.
I tell the people that hire us, if we don't get a standing ovation when we're finished with our performance, it's free - and we've always been paid.
Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
Doing nothing is very hard to do... you never know when you're finished.
After those first two BAFTAs, I didn't really get offered anything, which makes you think, 'Oh, no!' And, after I finished the second series of 'Broadchurch,' nothing came up for six months, which really is a long time, and I got a bit panicky.
I am now going from a prison to a palace: I have finished my work, and am now going to receive my wages.
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
I wish I finished music school, because then I feel like I could talk more about the dissonant notes.
It scares you: all the noise, the rattling, the shaking. But the look on everybody's face when you're finished and packing, it's the best smile in the world; and there's nobody hurt, and the well's under control.
I wasn't aware that 'House on Mango Street' was so influenced by Spanish until after I finished.
There's always something more to be accomplished with a character. Theater is a human experience. There's nothing shellacked or finished off about it. I guess that's why it always draws me back.
I just finished my 11th book last week, so I'm ready to start the next one.
I paint digitally now. A pity, in some ways, as the biggest price one pays is that you no longer have a finished piece of physical art to hang on a wall. I miss that terribly.
It was the 'Gaucho' album that finished us off. We had pursued an idea beyond the point where it was practical. That album took about two years, and we were working on it all of that time - all these endless tracking sessions involving different musicians. It took forever, and it was a very painful process.
When I look back on my career - if that's what it is - it looks a bit like a crazy quilt, and I think it's just really because, when one job has finished, I've never really been in a position where I had three or four options.
When I'm writing a book, I prefer not to speak about it, because only when the book is finished can I try to understand what I've really done and to compare my intentions with the result.
A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.
When I see a film I've finished, it's like another person made it. Like another mind.
Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.
I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.
