Your personal integrity, once established and earned, people don't have to think about it. They know. They know you. They know you'll do the right thing every time.
Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success.
'How does your life turn out?' That's the ultimate novelistic question to me.
What is for sale, what is not? If we really think that making your apologies to your wife or reading a bedside story to your child are activities that we can pay a stranger to do, then, without moralising, what has happened to us?
It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.
The problem with making movies is that you have to devote so much of your life to fawning and flattering the men in suits, whereas that doesn't happen in books. You just go and write, and then the book comes out.
I'm not going to lie, there are more interesting ways to spend your time than answering questions about yourself. But if there were no questions to ask me, I might have a beef with that.
Keep your eye on the ball.
If you really want to step up your team's creative thinking, take a hard look at how many people you're putting in a room together. More than three to five is probably too many.
No matter what your heartache may be, laughing helps you forget it for a few seconds.
Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
If you don't trust someone to look after your investments, then they shouldn't be doing the job for you.
When you're young and have the opportunity, it's crucial to learn as much as possible about your profession from every possible angle.
You have to continue to grow and evolve as individuals in order for your marriage to evolve. It takes two pillars to support a structure. If those two pillars become one, you have a structure that teeters.
With theater, depending on the audience, the show is different every night and really requires your constant concentration. With film, it's more possible to focus for shorter, more intense bits of time.
When I first saw tap dancing, I immediately got it: the righteousness of being able to make so much noise with your feet!
A food is not necessarily essential just because your child hates it.
The core is the most important muscle group in your body. If your core is not strong, the rest of your body is weakened, too.
Choose a field that will supply sufficient remuneration to provide adequately for your companion and your children. I bear testimony that these criteria are very important in choosing your life's work.
I eventually grew into a pre-teen Marilyn Munster, that being the only option I could find that allowed for a) blonde hair, b) a fondness for frilly pink things and wearing ribbons in your hair, and c) hanging out with monsters.
Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that.
Today, you have 100% of your life left.
It's kind of sad, the way we've turned the entertainment of reading into a kind of psychic broccoli - something to feel guilty about if you don't force it on your face-making children while dutifully consuming a few token florets yourself.
The idea of your younger sibling being in pain and realizing you are the cause of that pain is unbearable.
We're trying to make sure that financial advisers act like lawyers and doctors. When you go to a lawyer or doctor, they have an obligation to put your best interests first. Financial advisers don't.
I made a conscious decision not to tell anyone in my life. Now I tell people - don't tell anyone your idea until you have invested enough of yourself in it that you are not going to turn back. When a person has an idea at that conception moment it is the most vulnerable - one negative comment could knock you off course.
Hip-hop is more about attaining wealth. People respect success. They respect big. They don't even have to like your music. If you're big enough, people are drawn to you.
Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.
I mean, I think we're put here on earth to make your own destiny, to begin with. I don't think there's anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.
People only talk about what a joyous experience it is, but there is terror: Your life, as you know it, is over. It's over the day that child is born. It's over, and something completely new starts.
You gotta try your luck at least once a day, because you could be going around lucky all day and not even know it.
Given the current state of publishing, I think it helps to have a brand name on the cover of your book. Comedians are proven commodities with built-in audiences. They may not have the writing chops of a Dave Eggers, but they're salacious and funny and self-reflective.
You have to be luxurious nude. It's difficult to move in the nude in front of a mirror. It's much easier to move when you're dressed. But if you can walk around in the nude easily in front of your man, if you can be luxurious in the nude, then you've really got it.
It's fun to figure out a way to make something happen that will get the reader involved on a visceral level. When written well, an exciting scene on the page will actually have a physical effect on the reader - your heart will beat faster, your adrenaline will start to flow.
That's the problem with news interviews, you work your tail off to get prominent figures in the news on the radio, but once they've been on, the event passes, the urgency, the issues you talked about evaporate.
If you think back to your time as a teenager, everything was dramatic.
