I never really focus on writing for other people, to be honest. Every song I've ever written was for me to sing. Maybe if I'm writing for a rapper, but I'd still write it as though it was for myself and then sometimes I'm actually asked to do the part.
Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.
As they say, one thing led to another, and, ultimately, the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations, which ironically began six years ago this week.
When I was little, I asked my mom to move us to Los Angeles and get me an agent. She would say, 'Stop it. Go play in the dirt.'
If you asked me what pop is right now. I'd say hip hop.
I was in the National Academy of Fine Arts and Design, on a scholarship. I was - still am - an artist. They were looking for an actor for 'Take a Giant Step,' and a producer liked my look and asked if I could act. I said, 'Yep!' Then I got into acting more or less just to make money for paints and canvases.
My doctor asked me how many golf balls I had hit in my career. I'm lying there in bed calculating somewhere between four and five million golf balls I had hit to do that on my body.
I asked someone once why he liked Jean-Michel's work and why it was being singled out for acclaim, and he said, 'Because it looks like art.' But then again, art doesn't always look like art at first. The way the space shuttle that lifts off doesn't much resemble the space shuttle as it lands.
I wish anytime I went into a nice restaurant and asked for a table, they said, 'Well I'm sure you don't want one in the corner.'
When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame.
For the cable news guest, nothing happens for a while until suddenly everything happens very quickly. After you receive your television face, you stand around for a while, ignored, until you're sat down at a desk and asked to argue with strangers.
I've been asked a great deal about the influence I've had with my work and it's impossible to say, you know.
A big part of being in a wedding is the financial obligation, and that's something that people don't really talk about, but if you're asked to be in a wedding, you're gonna have to fork over some cash.
Most authors writing books like 'He's Just Not That Into You' dream of doing what I was being asked to do. I didn't like it. I'm good at giving advice, but doing it on TV and radio felt wrong, and when people resisted my point of view, I was like, 'Why am I doing this? This was not the plan.' So I stopped. It didn't make me feel good.
I get asked to do stupid things like panel shows and talk shows and things.
I was seen dancing at school by a director, who asked me to be in a TV play. And it had a huge impact. So I think that's what really started me off.
President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, 'I haven't communicated enough.' He said his job is to 'tell a story to the American people' - as if that's the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?
The National Academy of Sciences would be unable to give a unanimous decision if asked whether the sun would rise tomorrow.
I've been asked far too often, 'Can you be blacker?' I've gotten done with auditions and heard, 'We're not going to go black with this character.'
But at a certain point, and I don't really know... people have asked me this. I don't know exactly what it was that pushed me towards directing, but I think it was a naive notion that if I directed I would be able to play all the roles. A kind of greed.
And several galleries - two had asked me and I said no, because I didn't want to leave things on consignment.
I've been asked why does Ireland produce so many great musicians, and the answer is it doesn't. When you count the great musicians Ireland has given the world in the last 20 years, you can do it on one hand.
I can't think of a time that the U.S. government asked us or instructed us not to report or air something.
Some other things I don't miss: the media and the pressure of just being asked to do, and being asked questions every day.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
One of the things I've realised is that I am very simple. My wife asked me once if I loved her. I said: 'Look love, I'm a simple man. I love you. End of story.' But I guess you gotta keep saying it with women. I guess she needed reassurance.
When he asked me, with obvious self-satisfaction, what I thought of the scenario, I hardly knew how to answer. I asked if he had seen the play and was hardly surprised when he said no.
Someone asked me what the key to being a good frontman was, and I think having a sense of humor about it is pretty near the top of that list. It's a very strange place to be in, and I don't take that role too seriously.
If I were asked to say the most important things that lead to a successful life, I should say that, first of all, was integrity - unimpeachable integrity.
Somebody asked me, 'Why do people like vampires so much?' This was right after Obama had been elected and I said, 'Because we just spent eight years being sucked dry by one.'
Living in France while the Falklands War was going on, I felt a profound sense of shame and betrayal, just as I did by the war in Iraq. People have asked why I don't talk about that directly in my plays. Well, politics needs to be articulated in many different ways.
I swear to God, I would marry the first person who asked me, just because it seems so completely impossible that anyone would ask.
We were asked to believe that the variety and the novelty of even the crude films of the early days would provide a means of entertainment which would cut out the stage.
When I encountered rich people for the first time, I discovered that not only do they holiday in places that are hard to find on a map, but that they also use the names of seasons as verbs. When they asked me, 'Where did you summer and winter growing up?' I would usually say, 'As a child? The same place I springed and autumned.'
In the past, I never gave money to my children when they were young in return for nothing. When one of them approached me to give them cash, I asked them to do some work in exchange for it.
I didn't volunteer; they asked me. I felt a duty to testify.
