I'm a little more measured. That sense of urgency I thought accompanied things - it can take a little longer. You have to take the long view.
I didn't join a bank because my father worked in a bank or because I thought I was going to be a banker or because I thought I was going to be where I am today.
I started painting at 17; I took a class at Brentwood Art Center. I thought about art school - but I'm just so not a school person.
I never thought about myself as an activist when we were coming along. I love the people I love. I didn't care whether they could be a Democrat, Republican, communist... anything but a racist.
I thought they would never select an Eastern writer for the Nobel. I was surprised.
One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
I think it's ironic that I fell in love with a man I thought I would never be interested in because he's an athlete. I was always, 'An athlete? Heck no.'
I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.
You already feel unsure of yourself, and then you see your worst fears in print. It really knocked me - which is why, I think, I was working, working, working, because I was trying to run away from the fact that I thought I couldn't do it.
This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
I had some great high points and thought: 'This is fantastic. I'm going to be a huge star.' Then something happens, and you can't get a job to save your life.
It's a lot easier producing for people or being in the background, and they can take all the fire from the front. But in order to express the ideas that I have without any kind of contamination, I thought it would be a cool thing to be out front.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
I saw the 'Wizard of Oz' recently and realized that, all my life, I thought they were real monkeys with wings. That's how scary that movie was for me.
All my life, I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.
I know the difference between someone coming up to you on the street and saying, 'Hey, you're that dude, right. Yes, that's what I thought,' and somebody coming up and saying, 'Big fan of the show. Big fan of that character.' And that's nice. You're out there telling stories, you're hoping to find an audience, and it's very appreciated.
As a boy, I was never interested in theater because I came from a working-class Scottish home. I thought, 'I want to do movies.' Then it was finding the means to do it.
I did a show back when I was in high school - so I was about 17 - and it was the first time I was on stage. I never even thought about being an actor before that, but after that experience, I knew it was what I wanted to do.
This campaign was special because we always kept the challenger mentality we had from the start. We managed to keep the against-all-odds, can-do spirit that kept us going when no one thought we could win.
I characterize myself a little bit as a reluctant filmmaker. I learned from watching my friend in college stay up late at night, at 2 A.M., just to get the lighting right, and I thought, 'You know what, if that's what it's going to be like, I think I'm just going to write,' and I did that.
I thought, if I went into business I'd be able to control my own destiny.
Language is always burdened by thought.
I thought I was so much smarter than everybody. And I'm not.
The Democratic party of Florida has put a temperance plank in its platform and the Republican party of every state would nail that plank in their platform if they thought it would carry the election.
There was a lake beneath me, but the big, heavy parachute which had to be opened two miles above the ground couldn't be steered. My first thought was, 'Lord, they send just one woman into space, and she has to end up in the water.'
Somebody close to me once said, 'Oh, no man will ever accept your children.' And I just thought it was the most horrifying thing someone has ever said to me in my entire life. I was determined to find somebody who would make that not true.
I always thought that if you don't feel the breath in the actors' bodies, you lose all the intimacy and truth.
Today, I guess I give a lot more thought to the roles before I sign them.
Most of the Amazon basin is as flat as a pancake and laced with extravagantly meandering waterways. One school of thought holds that more than 145 million years ago, when Africa and South America were joined, the Amazon's main stem was connected to the Niger River and actually flowed in the opposite direction, toward the Pacific Ocean.
I did the one concert, and I was not bitten by the conducting bug, and I thought I was done, but then the phone started to ring, and gradually, over time, I started conducting more and more. Now a third of my performances are with orchestras.
Two years ago I hadn't even thought of the Woman in White, and I was doing a television show and I said I hadn't found a story and the next day somebody rang me and said have you ever thought of the Woman in White.
What I hated was doing what somebody in LA thought Jeff Foxworthy ought to do.
To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.
Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
I think we raised about 20,000 pounds. There was a live performance thing so we thought we'd donate the equipment for an online charity in Britain. I hated to part with my guitar, but it was for such a great cause.
I thought 'Skyfall' was a sumptuous film.
