I believe if you go to a movie theatre, and you see something you think is incredible, if you walk out of the theatre and there was a bin in the lobby of DVDs of the film you just watched, you would buy four of them - one for you and three for your friends.
I'm not here to tell you what your average needs to be, but it would seem to me that one way to protect yourself, as an entrepreneur, from the dreaded average is to understand what that looks like in your industry, your business, and your personal life and take the steps to be above average.
It's a tragedy, but with your support and your help we will wage this fight and we're going to win it.
It's really important to be active in your community, whatever community that is... find allies and find people who you relate to and who make you stronger as a group.
When you go to the Sistine Chapel with Sophia Loren, it can be quite some time before your thoughts turn to the ceiling.
When you start a novel, it is always like pushing a boulder uphill. Then, after a while, to mangle the metaphor, the boulder fills with helium and becomes a balloon that carries you the rest of the way to the top. You just have to hold your nerve and trust to narrative.
They said this is Vanity Fair, and I said, Oh, I already take the magazine. They said Annie Leibovitz wants to take your picture and I thought, How nice!
Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in while, or the light won't come in.
The advantage of online banking is that you can pay bills superfast, and your account is automatically credited or debited for each deposit and payment, making it easier to stay on track.
I remember feeling that technology was like trying to draw with your foot. In a ski boot. It was the most indirect way to work imaginable, but the potential had us all excited. I started in stop motion.
Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.
The skill set that I think we have as actors is so cool because they train you in ways that you never thought you'd be trained. And that's skills that they can't take back. So as you go further in your career, you can dump all these skills into things.
How can you sing of amazing grace and all God's wonders without using your hands?
I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.
It is a lonely existence to be a child with a disability which no-one can see or understand, you exasperate your teachers, you disappoint your parents, and worst of all you know that you are not just stupid.
Everybody always asks me, 'How much can you bench?' I'm like, 'I don't know. I don't lift weights.' Now that I'm in college, we lift weights every once in a while, but not maxing out. We do things with a weight vest on... That surprises people, too, how strong you can get by just basically lifting your body all the time.
I'm not retiring. I am graduating. Today is my graduation day. Retirement means that you'll just go ahead and live on your laurels and surf all day in Oceanside. It ain't going to happen.
Writing a novel is so hard, and there are so many problems that the last thing you're thinking about is adapting this mess you have on your hands as a movie. You just want to get it to work as a novel. That's your main focus.
Be careful about the advice you give, especially to your children.
If your working television sits on top of your non-working television, you might be a redneck.
Many a man owes his advancement very largely to his ability to converse well. The ability to interest people in your conversation, to hold them, is a great power.
Should doubt knock at your doorway, just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts, I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people.
In America most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.
It's amazing... to enjoy the results of your labor.
Sometimes the world seems like a big hole. You spend all your life shouting down it and all you hear are echoes of some idiot yelling nonsense down a hole.
You make kingdoms and castles on your own.
When you're at the end of your rope, all you have to do is make one foot move out in front of the other. Just take the next step. That's all there is to it.
No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.
I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.
You need someone to tell you how to do things like hitting your marks, or driving a car so it looks right or getting out of a car so it doesn't take a million years of screen time.
My parents both work in publishing, and I was a bright, academic kind of kid, and I read a lot of books, and when you read a lot, I guess the muscle that gets exercised is where you can hear the voices in your head. You can turn words into pictures and into sounds and into colours and smells.
Gender is between your ears and not between your legs.
Right now, I'm following the Buddhist principle: Smile as abuse is hurled your way and this too shall pass.
Make every thought, every fact, that comes into your mind pay you a profit. Make it work and produce for you. Think of things not as they are but as they might be. Don't merely dream - but create!
The pitch, timbre, volume, speed, and cadence of your voice, the speed with which you speak, and even the way you modulate pitch and loudness, are all hugely influential factors in how convincing you are and how people judge your state of mind and character.
