My family truly believes they are better cooks than I am. They see me as Giada, not as a celebrity chef. To them I'm just me - their granddaughter, niece, etc., and they're older and wiser. I like that because it keeps you grounded.
Most of us are consumed with our own thoughts and desires and are not always thinking about what other people may want. This is not necessarily being egocentric; it is just being human.
When I'm acting, that's all I'm doing. When I'm not acting, I'm not thinking about acting. If I'm writing, I'm just writing.
Let's just say, the American school of suburban angst is not my cup of tea.
I don't have to research humanity, I just have to be courageous enough to share that part of myself with everybody.
The difference for me is I just don't sleep on friends' couches anymore.
I think we've been dulled by capitalism. We're just blobs now - we're so worried about how we can keep paying the lease on the car, the mortgage, the lease on the toaster and all that. You can't really think about much else. If you lose that, you lose the whole lot.
My vision for G.O.O.D. Music is just carrying on with the tradition of putting out high-quality music, high-quality art. G.O.O.D. Music is entrenched in the culture of hip-hop. It's entrenched in the culture, period.
When I was a teenager I loved acting, but I really just loved it for myself. I didn't like the fact that anyone else saw the work I was doing. When I moved to New York, I started to realize that I wanted people to see the stuff that I was doing, and I wanted it to mean something to them.
Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.
Just had a close call landing in Tampa. The tires blew out upon landing.
I'm getting to the point where they see me as a good actor, rather than just a good guy who can act.
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.
I always have a ping-pong table in the studio. If you're with an artist and you notice the situation is going south a little bit, it's like, 'You wanna play ping-pong or foosball?' Or, 'You wanna go grab somethin' to eat?' And then you just like talk to them and relax them and get them comfortable and get yourself comfortable.
There was a huge, tremendous amount of disabled veterans and the Veteran's Administration just wasn't geared up for it. I know for a fact that it's getting better and better.
If you go in and audition for roles rather than just be offered them, then you kind of get a chance to kind of discover that you can do something that you didn't think you could do.
I see so many people. They just seem to be hopeless. Being a Christian and being a pastor, the ultimate hope is in Jesus.
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.
I can hardly think of an occasion when I've got into a stand-up fight with any political opponent. I've got my views, people know what they are, they can agree or they can choose to disagree. I'm not going to waste time just rubbishing everybody else.
As much as I miss the work, I don't miss NBC. I don't miss being there. It was just the wrong atmosphere for me.
I have no intention of lingering through a season, just to have a chance to be an alternate on a relay. I don't want that.
I would have thought he would be there out of just plain curiosity. It was incredible that he was missing.
You realise that there's nothing more endearing than people who are desperately trying to be liked or trying to be the hero, you know? Who also probably just need a hug or want to impress their dad?
I think doing dramas kind of wears on you. It's just intense.
I had this grand plan for writing the history of the United States in six volumes. This was in the mid-1990s; I was fairly young and very ambitious. I pitched it to a publisher, who just laughed at me.
Maybe people don't see me as believable playing a person of today. I guess I'm just more realistic in a corset and funny hairstyles.
I always wrote. My parents are writers. It just seemed like something people did.
A novel means a new way of doing a story. If you go back the origins of a novel, 'Clarissa' - that's not a novel; it's just a bunch of letters. But it isn't! Because it's organised in a particular way! A novel is what you make of it.
Sci-fi is just as much about social science as technology.
I've got nothing against selling out, but just let me do it for something that matters. Not so I can be Number One With a Bullet, as it were, but so I can leave this world feeling like I made a difference.
The Second Amendment is a constitutional right. I didn't make it up, the Republican Party didn't make it up. It's in the Constitution. I think it's just as important as any of the other rights in our constitution.
You just try to learn and see what you can put in your repertoire, and that's what I try to do.
That professionalism comes from what I've watched people do on the set. I'm just trying to be as respectful to the environment, as they have been. I think I still act like a kid. I just try to be as professional as I can.
It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
One of the first speaking roles I had was in a film called 'Svengali', with Peter O'Toole and Elizabeth Ashley. I was a waiter, and I had about three lines. And I was ready! I had been around people like that, and I knew they were just actors. All the work I had done, it was all there, and I felt like I knew all the mechanics.
