I felt more comfortable playing other people than being myself, when I was a kid. And then, the tables turned. Through my performances, I've become more comfortable with who I am, and then I just bring more of myself into the people that I play.
One of the things that impacted me the most was in the 12th grade. I just assumed I would get the lead in the musical. Well, I didn't get it; I got the second lead, and I was devastated... my mom said something like, 'Often the supporting character is better.'
What was I like as a kid? The same as I am now, just smaller with a higher voice.
What I kind of want to spread as my message to all kinds of youth that I get to reach out to is, you can do cool stuff; you've just got to put in time and be dedicated.
We are all living together on a single planet, which is threatened by our own actions. And if you don't have some kind of global cooperation, nationalism is just not on the right level to tackle the problems, whether it's climate change or whether it's technological disruption.
My mother never watched me train in Romania. She wasn't allowed, it just wasn't done back then. My training was paid for by the government. My parents were not at the Olympics with me, either. I never expected them to be.
Technology and the Internet are not just changing politics here in the U.S. It's also happening abroad. In the Philippines, where I grew up, grassroots organizers used text messaging to help overthrow a president.
We think these big people are very happy, but the truth is they are worse than us. We are just worried about one thing - hunger; they have a thousand worries.
When I was younger, I just lived my life on paper. I didn't really live in the real world very much. As a consequence, I couldn't cope with the real world and real people very well. That in itself became life threatening, so I had to stop drawing so much and learn how to cope with people.
I love the Oscars. All sorts of tacky people win. And watching everyone run up and down those aisles is just adorable.
I want to feel like I'm doing something creative and trying different things, putting different hats on and playing. I don't know what's the point otherwise; otherwise, it's just a job. You punch a time clock.
You feel the shame, humiliation, and anger at being just another victim of prejudice, and at the same time, there's the nagging worry that maybe... you're just no good.
It's not my style to be thinking about what a record is while I'm making it: I just write songs.
I love baking cakes and slices and biscuits, but I will only make them if I'm going somewhere with lots of people so I can share them around. I've got a sweet tooth, and I'm not good with discipline, so it's easier if I just don't have desserts in the house.
It's not selling out, necessarily, to do something to gain some kind of notoriety that gives you the cache to do be able to go and do something else that you want. There's some dues that you just have to pay in life.
There's nothing I find more lazy than unmotivated camerawork just to make things look interesting.
There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it.
Ineffective substitute teaching is a problem that means thousands of hours of lost learning for America's students. It cannot be dismissed with a sigh and 'Just wait for the teacher to come back on Monday.'
We have a rich tradition here in the United States of great decathletes, which is amazing 'cause we have absolutely no program to develop these guys. Zero. There's nothing. They do it on their own, just like I did back in '76.
I'm one of those people who laughs everything off. If I mess up, I just say, 'Ha! Totally didn't mean to do that.'
I really just do what I like. I don't understand what the general public likes sometimes.
I'm very ADD when it comes to working out. I have to keep it interesting for myself or it just gets quite monotonous.
So many people think that if you're writing fantasy, it means you can just make everything up as you go. Want to add a dragon? Add a dragon! Want some magic? Throw it in. But the thing is, regardless of whether you're dealing with realism or fantasy, every world has rules. Make sure to establish a natural order.
For queer people, the personal is very political, just to talk about it in a public space. It's very political just to come out and take up that space and be like, 'This is my narrative. It's not an outsider narrative, and it's not a fetish narrative; it's just my story, and it's worth being told and listened to.'
I love looking back at my old pictures and pictures of my grandma and my mom and see how they expressed themselves at different parts of their lives, and it just tells an interesting story, so why not play around?
I was growing up in Hyesan, right by the closest North Korea-China border. China was just across the river: you could see across. So I was curious. On the river, on both sides, you have houses, then mountains. I wanted to know what was on the other side of the Chinese mountains.
Every month, about 20 tons of paper are wasted in restaurant menus alone, and so, you know, by that rationale, if you just ate your menu that was made from organic, local products, you could eliminate that paper waste.
It's just madness. First email. Then instant message. Then MySpace. Then Facebook. Then LinkedIn. Then Twitter. It's not enough anymore to 'Just do it.' Now we have to tell everyone we are doing it, when we are doing it, where we are doing it and why we are doing it.
I know what to do to go for it and just take the game in my hands.
I can't maintain the body of a 16-year-old anymore. That's just a really boring life to me. You really just cannot do anything fun, ever.
I believe that we can 'sense' the future. We just haven't yet established the mechanism allowing it to happen.
The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view.
In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters.
I want the kids to know that it's not a myth that somebody from their city plays and wins in the NBA. I just want to influence them to work hard and do whatever they want to do in life, whether it's to be a basketball player or scientist... if they believe in themselves, they can do anything.
When I wrote 'Kidulthood,' I didn't even know there was going to be a 'Kidulthood.' I just wanted to test myself to see if I could write a script.
I've always been interested in the idea of space exploration. When I was younger it was just a dream, but the theory of rockets being able to travel through space was very much alive. I found it very exciting.
