I like relaxed sets. I like to feel that I can make a mistake without feeling like I'm costing somebody money. I like a sense of freedom. I like it when people are open and are willing to let you do your work.
It is forbidden to go east, but I have gone, forbidden to go on the great river, but I am there. Open your hearts, you spirits, and hear my song.
Finding your place as an artist is the hardest thing. You come out of college with what feels like a Mickey Mouse degree that qualifies you for nothing in the real world.
Part of me feels like when you had a lot of success in your teens and 20s, it gets harder for you in your 30s because people are so attached to you as this ingenue. So even though you're older, they still think of you as that girl - that waifish young girl. And so it was sort of like a struggle.
If you wrote something, you deserve to get paid and recognized for your work. No one should take a bow with another man's hat.
I think you can totally be a totally normal kid from the suburbs of Chicago and go off and play shows. It's one of those things that when you go home, you're still the nerd you were when you left, and your parents still get to yell at you about cleaning up your room, and your girlfriend still drags you to the pet store.
Every dancer has injuries, and your injury could happen that season that you were getting that one part that you've wanted to do your whole career. So you have to appreciate every single moment until it happens.
While therefore your tears flow, let a due proportion be tears of joy. Yet take the bitter cup with both hands and sit down to your repast. You will soon learn a secret: that there is sweetness at the bottom.
The key is to constantly keep the audience surprised. If they feel like something is going to happen, or they think from an educational standpoint that something is about to happen because of all the moving parts, it is your job to break that expectation and show the audience something different.
I love travelling full stop - so while I've had some harrowing instances, I never look at them negatively. Memories are made when you're travelling - not when you're chained to your desk.
When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.
If you persist in your purpose of secession, there will be war - a bloody and cruel war. Not only will the North fight, but she will also triumph. The experiment of secession will fail, and the South, in ruin and desolation, will bitterly repent the day when she attempted to overthrow a wise and beneficent government.
Put your blog out into the world and hope that your talent will speak for itself.
You really can expand the boundaries of your life and do risky things and prove yourself by doing them.
Every little girl looks up to her mom so much - that's your first hero.
You know that thing where you're trying to do the crossword puzzle, and you're trying to fit the word that's in your head in the puzzle, and then you go 'Ugh!' and you walk away, and then it comes to you. I'm interested in that moment. The release of expectation, and the release of pleasing yourself and pleasing anybody. Breaking the mindset.
If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.
I find that the time that goes by is actually your best friend when you are making a record. The passing of time gives you perspective on what you recorded and what you wrote. If something sounds good to you 12 months after you recorded it then chances are pretty good that there's something valuable about the part or the song.
I give dating advice on a regular basis. It's not that I'm any expert, but it's always nice to share that with your friends.
One of the biggest things I struggle with is people's opinions. As much as I would like to say that I don't care, I see those comments. And sometimes it affects you more than others, or may completely change your mood.
In our friendships we have to be wise that we choose godly people to be our friends. Somebody might say, well does that mean that you should never have a lost person as your friend? No, I wouldn't say that. But you can't have the same intimacy with a lost person that you can with a godly person in whom the Holy Spirit is living.
You have to have a sense of what it looks like, not from the point of view of the policymaker but from the point of view of those who are at the receiving end of your policies.
They say your childhood influences your tastes and interests, or your approach if you're an artist. So what you create, whatever you saw, whatever your childhood was like - it influences how you're going to end up.
When you're making the film, you don't really think the audience; it's only when you start editing that you really start to became aware of your audience because you're thinking of how you communicate these ideas, and how lucid can you be, and yet stay within the language you've established.
Watching your husband become a father is really sexy and wonderful.
When things go wrong or don't turn out the way you pictured them in your head, you just have to go with the best intentions defense. I have a lot of good intentions.
I think, as I've gotten older, I've been able to be more reckless with my choices, because practically speaking, you get less careful. Your choices become more instinctive, and you feel like if you make a mistake, it won't destroy you.
You're stuck in front of the microphone. You can't use your hands. I like to do things.
I took to heart the instructions my father drilled into my head. Respect the customer. Pay attention to her. Take her package to her car. You broke your neck to get what she wanted because you never knew when the next customer would come along.
If 'Party of Five' hadn't done well, it would have been a bunch of names involved in the demise. But if 'Time of Your Life' doesn't do well, it will be my name. You have to prepare for the worst. This is a very fickle business.
With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that.
Religion is a very scary thing, because a pastor is in a position of power. And if you use that power badly, you ruin people's lives, and you ruin your own life.
A lot of folks I mentor ask me, 'How did you get there?' I tell them, you never plan on it. Do a good job and treat customers well, do the right things for the right reasons. Prepare yourself, but don't spend all your time worrying about it. Just do your job, and you'll be recognized for it.
There's more to playing the guitar than being able to split your legs.
Every New Year's Eve, I have a pact to do something I never thought I'd do. So I created this list. You have to free your mind to do things you wouldn't think of doing. Don't ever say no.
I don't know that you're able to measure your aggregate wisdom as you go through life. I can't say that I ever feel that I'm sitting on top of a growing mound of wisdom.
