I thought I was going to be a veterinarian. I was good in science and in math, and I loved animals.
I've always written a little bit. I mean, I've written screenplays, and I've doctored my dialogue for years, and I've written speeches - I was a speechwriter on 'The West Wing,' so I like that kind of thing. But I never really thought I'd write a book.
For Bobby and I to sing R&B and sound black was probably the stupidest thing we could do. White radio stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were black. Black stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were white. Any time you break ground, you go against the grain.
When I was asked to compose a score for... 'Palo Alto,' I first thought to myself, 'What is the house that these characters would want to live in?' I wanted to paint a picture and color scheme that I could work around. I gently apply different daubs to see what fits to match the color I have in mind with these characters.
I thought it would be more of a challenge than it was to cater for every size, but as you're aware of a woman's curves - they're kind of like a race track - you can create something glamorous and beautiful.
People in Hollywood go home to their wives and children who look like they do. If you're in that position, your natural thought pattern is sometimes to think, 'Superman, oh yeah he's white.' You can't get mad at somebody for doing that. It's the world they live in and for some, they only live in that bubble.
Men go into marriage with virtually no expectations whatsoever. Ten years later, the men are delightfully surprised to find out that it's actually kind of nice, and the women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be.
I went to a great church here in L.A., gave my heart to the Lord and felt freedom from things I've carried throughout my life that I just thought, 'I don't have to carry them any more.'
On my 50th birthday in 2005, my discount-wielding AARP card came in the mail. I hurled it in the trash, put on something fabulous, and had a decadent meal. Just the thought of putting it in my wallet felt like a concession.
Innocent parents might have thought that a musical cartoon version of a fairy tale would be a child's ideal introduction to movie magic. Yet Walt Disney taught moral lessons in the most useful way: by scaring the poop out of the little ones.
My interests started about in science and in mathematics; I always thought I was going to be a mathematician.
I never thought about what I would write. I just come from such a big family of storytellers.
I did 'Pines,' and everybody wanted me to be the bad boy. Then I did Tony in 'Brooklyn,' and everybody wanted me to be the sweet kid. So I just want to keep everybody on their toes. Basically, that was the thought process.
For 'Blue Jasmine,' I made a decision not to wear any make up in the last shot of the film, as I felt like she had such a mask on - I thought it would be a good idea to leave her with nothing and become completely transparent.
When I first got pitched on Uber, I thought it was the dumbest idea ever.
Some people thought I was using my popularity as a singer to sell my first novel. For others, it was almost a sacrilege: a practitioner of a minor art daring to enter the field of high art.
I never really thought about what characters I play. I always just wanted different characters.
I can be a real pessimist. You know that when you win an Oscar, and you walk offstage, and your first thought is: 'Oh God, I've peaked.'
I thought 'Fight Club' was great as David Fincher's version.
Although I was really interested in physics, I think I wanted to do it because I thought it was really hard. I did theoretical physics.
When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there.
If you are going to be serving a living thing, you have to honor that living thing with some kind of care and thought and preparation to rationalize the taking of that life in some way. Where if you're just grinding up hamburger at McDonald's, I see that as a bit of an affront to living things.
When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things that are difficult to put into words. In the work, everything belongs to everything else - the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said.
I had begun my professional career when I was 9 years old at the Cleveland Play House, and it was a very specific, real theater sort of like, you know, in England and the Berliner Ensemble - very devoted people. And I thought the theater was the greatest place I had ever been, and that's what I wanted to do.
I never thought I was going to be popular; I never thought I was going to be famous.
There was something so empowering about having President Obama in office because I know that for many of us, that's something that we never thought that we'd see in our lifetime.
In the urgent aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, with more attacks thought to be imminent, analysts wanted to use 'contact chaining' techniques to build what the NSA describes as network graphs of people who represented potential threats.
I have a theory about Ireland, being at the edge of Europe. For 1,000 years, people didn't know what was beyond. But we thought about it - a lot. And that 'beyond' became internalized in our psyche.
I remember my uncle and my father telling me that my mother didn't want me because I was blind. She thought being blind was a disgrace and a punishment from God.
The deeper I go into mythology, the more I find. I originally did five 'Percy Jackson' books. I thought that would cover Greek mythology and I couldn't have been more wrong. It's ever-expanding.
I moved from Philadelphia to California when I was 25, after traveling abroad for a year. I thought I'd come home eventually and settle down, but I didn't.
I started off as an Australian model. I had so many knockbacks, having short hair and being rejected, and I always thought: I'm never gonna get to where I want to get unless I start looking more feminine.
Mmmmmmmm. Anderson. He's dreamy. Just dreamy. I've been a fan of his since season 1 of 'The Mole.' I just thought he was so cool when he talked in this cool, low, secret-agent voice.
Of course, 'True Grit' is a Western, but we never considered our film a classical Western and honestly never thought about genre at all. We didn't talk about John Ford or Sergio Leone, even though we like their films. Really, we were driven only by our enthusiasm for Charles Portis's book.
No breed of cats in its proper condition can by any stretch of the imagination be thought of as even slightly ungraceful - a record against which must be pitted the depressing spectacle of impossibly flattened bulldogs, grotesquely elongated dachshunds, hideously shapeless and shaggy Airedales, and the like.
I saw a niche in the market where made-to-measure wasn't being done in a modern, fresh way or in a short period of time. Traditionally, bespoke orders take a very long time, but I thought, 'Here we are with all these fashion-forward ideas - why not?'
