All beautiful and noble qualities have been united in me... I shall be the fruit which will leave eternal vitality behind even after its decay. How great must be your joy, therefore, to have given birth to me.
Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.
You have within you many strong and cruel enemies to overcome. You must know that there are still a thousand ties which you must break. No one can tell you what they are; only you can tell by looking at yourself and into your heart.
Hendrix was the first person I had come across who seemed completely free, and when you're nine or 10, your life is entirely dominated by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be. Hendrix was the first person who made me think it might be good to be a singer and a guitarist - before that I wanted to be a footballer.
There's a fashion for a macho style of filmmaking. How long can your longest take be? And shooting things in one shot. For me, if you can sort of disappear and make people feel that they are there, that involves massive amounts of work.
It's not about failure; it's about trying something and risking something for attaining your goal.
You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences.
Right from the start with music, I was like, 'I'm just going to do this, and I don't care about anything else. There are certain things you have to give up, even at 13, 14: your Friday and Saturday nights, having a regular girl, lots of things like that. I look at Amy Winehouse, and I think perhaps she just don't want to do it that much.
The worst part was waiting around. Sometimes you are ready at 9 a.m. and you don't start until the afternoon. Occupying your time while you wait is the hardest part of the movie.
No matter how great you are, the next great one is already sitting there waiting to take your place.
You go out on the practice range, and something kind of clicks, and you start hitting the ball very crisply. And you're sure that you've found it, the holy grail - that all you have to do is hold your hand in a certain way. Then you go out on the golf course, and it's completely disappeared.
There can be moments in your life where you may feel attracted to someone depending on circumstance, depending on the person of one gender or another, and sometimes where that is less of an influence in your life.
Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.
The best thing you can do for your body is sleep. It's simple. Cater to your body as much as to your mind. Your body, after all, houses your mind. You have to pay attention to your physicality as much as your mentality.
Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.
I firmly believe that you can't get a good movie without risking a bad movie. A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.
And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.
Keri Russell is one of the prettiest girls I've ever seen in my life. She's one of those girls that doesn't have that thing when you walk into the trailer in the morning, and your face is all bashed in - like a lot of actors, even the beautiful and handsome ones.
To have the recognition of your colleagues is great. The public attention is a mixed blessing.
In New York one lives in the moment rather more than Socrates advised, so that at a party or alone in your room it will always be difficult to guess at the long term worth of anything.
If you nurture your mind, body, and spirit, your time will expand. You will gain a new perspective that will allow you to accomplish much more.
It's hard to always be reduced to the way you look or your sex appeal or what that is.
I'm just really trying to say what I really mean, which is: 'Your eye's on the prize, your eye's on the future. It's nice to know that a lot of wonderful things have happened to your life and that so much of it has been successful. That's great, but the work is really what makes it fun - and that has to be the future.'
When I heard The Beatles, that was my turning point. They were like my mentors. You know, the funny thing about that, when I heard 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' at first I said these guys are like a flash in the pan. But the second album, I had to take all that back. John Lennon - one of the greatest writers in the world.
The secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is to give the other side the illusion of control. Don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Ask questions, that begin with 'How?' or 'What?' so your opponent uses mental energy to figure out the answer.
You can't manage Wall Street. Wall Street has its own viewpoints on everything. I have always believed, if you manage your business correctly, Wall Street will take care of itself.
People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an example; I don't read what's handed to me. People say, 'Here, here's your speech, or here's an idea for a speech.' They're changed. Trust me.
My father worked real hard. I admired him. My father taught me you needed to work with your brain and not your back. I've made that a passion.
When your arm gets hit, the ball is not going to go where you want it to.
The most important thing for workers to understand is that you have to make yourself indispensable. You must make money for your employer or make his life easier, preferably both. Also, you have to learn as much as you can about your chosen endeavor.
Until the year 1967, it was a crime, for which you could be put in prison, to make homosexual love to someone in your own house. If they came in and caught you at it, you could be put into prison. This has changed - I'm talking about England, incidentally.
I found there's a fairly blatant racism in America that's already there, and I don't think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it's sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here - I just see it everywhere.
English people are famous for never speaking out but only saying what they really feel about you behind your back. Americans believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I like exploring those, er, differences in national snippiness.
Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.
The best way to persuade people is with your ears - by listening to them.
Listen to your intuition. It will tell you everything you need to know.
