We only get together when there's a good reason. Like, last summer, we didn't really intend to go out, but we thought the B-52's tour was a good opportunity.
The attorney general called and asked me if I was willing to be interviewed for FBI director. And the truth is I told him I didn't think so, that I thought it was too much for my family. But that I would sleep on it and call him back in the morning. And so I went to bed that night convinced I was going to call him back and say no.
All I ever wanted to do was get a great job on a TV show. When I read 'Modern Family' and started looking at what was available - I obviously couldn't play Gloria; I couldn't play Claire. When I saw the character of Cam, I was like, 'I have to have a shot at this,' because I thought it was a character that would be really fun to play.
They say shock therapy is good for some things, but it didn't do me any good. It was a pretty primitive treatment at the time - once they gave it to you, you couldn't remember how long you'd been there. It knocked me back for a long time. I thought I'd never write again.
There was never any career plan. When 'Red Dwarf' started I thought we were doing a curious little sitcom on BBC2, I didn't think I was becoming an actor. I didn't see that 21 years later I'd still be talking about it, let alone filming a new one. For me everything's always been an accident.
Everybody said, 'You hit it so big when you were on 'Ally McBeal.' ' I didn't do anything for a year after 'Ally McBeal,' and I had to write David Kelley to get myself back on 'Ally' a second time because I thought the character should be on again.
The ideas which led to the Analytical Engine occurred in a manner wholly independent of any that were connected with the Difference Engine. These ideas are indeed, in their own intrinsic nature, independent of the latter engine and might equally have occurred had it never existed nor even been thought of at all.
I've always thought my soundtracks do pretty good, because they're basically professional equivalents of a mix tape I'd make for you at home.
It's really lonely trying to build something by yourself. It's good to have thought partners to bounce ideas off of.
I thought Gen. McChrystal was unfireable, that his position was secure.
I've always thought I'm pretty ugly.
You need to be naive enough to do things differently. No big publishing house would have allowed us to co-create a fully designed, four color business book in landscape format - because it was contrary to the publishing industry logic. However, we thought of Business Model Generation as a product, not just a book - similar to Apple products.
Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.
Everyone always asks me, 'Do you want to be famous... ' I never really thought about becoming famous. I just want to work, to be able to put out inspiring and good film and TV.
I thought I had more of a European sense of humour than the average American comic.
I was really interested in acting and thought secretly I could do it but didn't tell anyone. It was a quite private thing that I wanted to do.
I didn't think Marilyn Monroe was beautiful. It used to worry me. I thought maybe I'm not put together like the other chaps.
I've been a supporter of green initiatives for years. I've been paying more and more attention to it, you know, with three kids. I thought it was tragic when the Kyoto Protocol was killed by the U.S. It was sort of a call to action.
I thought my body was going to change so quickly with pregnancy that I'd freak out. But it was really gradual.
People ask how I can be a conservative and still want higher taxes. It makes my head spin, and I guess it shows how old I am. But I thought that conservatives were supposed to like balanced budgets. I thought it was the conservative position to not leave heavy indebtedness to our grandchildren.
Fracking is an incredible risk to the human race, I don't know why they even thought of doing it.
I grew up loving classic rock music - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones - and then one day I heard 'Baby One More Time' on the radio and I thought 'What is this?' I was eight and it changed my life.
Instead of inventing a gobbledygook password, you join three simple words that come from a thought known only to you. If one day you were driving to work and ran over a frog that ended up flat, you might choose 'frog work flat.'
All the music I loved as a child, people thought it was junk. People were unaware of the subtext in so many of those records, but if you were a kid, you were just completely tuned in, even though you didn't always say - you wouldn't dare say it was beautiful.
For 'The Haunting Hour,' I thought it would be a lot of fun. It was great to play this cool kid role. My episode is called 'The Intruders' and my character is this mean, angry teenager because her younger brother was just born and he gets all of the attention. She's always playing tricks on her family, and there are some cool twists.
I think Sacajawea was caught in a series of tragic situations - her kidnapping as a child, her being passed from tribe to tribe, being sold into marriage. However, I never thought of her as a tragic figure. I do not think she was a victim in the way we think of tragic figures.
The Police could get away with doing an entire record with really no audible reverb, which I have always admired and thought would be a lot of fun to try to re-create.
I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.
I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. 'The Gathering' did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.
I thought it was a prank. There is no way six different major labels trying to reach out to me. But it was actually happening.
Say 'Toronto' or 'Ontario,' and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.
In every Kubrick movie, there is so much great thought put into the surroundings. It's almost like the sets are huge characters in the movie at all times.
When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system.
I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched, because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.
I thought if I didn't write my own show, I'll rust.
I really think I tried to capture the essence of the comics: what I thought would be the essence of Elektra. And then, as any character that I play, I really tried to dig inside me and try to reach real emotions and transpose that in her world, in who she is.
