The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination - what do you dream of wanting to do?
I think it was much better when you got on your horse and rode two miles to talk to your neighbor.
I take people the way they are. You could work all your life to change them, and they never will. What's the point? They need to be who they are.
No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you modify the operation to make it simpler.
It's all about communication and a dialogue between individuals - get rid of the labels, get rid of the shame, get rid of the stigmas and just be your most authentic self.
I have to entertain, because if I don't entertain you, you're not going to continue reading. But if I'm not out to enlighten, or change your mind about something, or change your behavior, then I really don't want to take the journey.
If you're a baby about the media, as I was, you can't imagine what it's like when the great approval machine shines its beam on you, when every time you cross the street someone comes out of a manhole to talk about your haircut.
Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.
I don't have to muzzle myself when I'm a civilian. When you're a governor, you kind of have to do it, because you represent the whole state. You have to leave your personal opinions to yourself a lot. I learned that.
You never believe your own hype. As quick as somebody can be 'the guy' in Hollywood, he can be gone the next minute. For me, it's about doing great work. And then hopefully you keep working forever.
Work on your craft, and your career will come. Work on your community, and your career will come. But just work on your career, and you'll have neither a craft nor a community.
If you forget the words to your own song, you can always claim artistic license. Forget the words to the national anthem, and you're screwed.
I believe in infrastructure, I believe in investing in your hard assets. Where I think government starts to fail is when it starts getting itself weighed down with the social programs. And I think the American public just feels like a lot of that money is tossed aside and wasted.
Remember, your vote is not a wasted vote. Vote with your heart and think about the future generations the next time you vote.
The more you drive positive change, the more enhanced your business model.
Songwriting wasn't my gift. I think you have to cultivate a gift; you have to practice and develop craft around your gift so that you can execute it in more convenient, efficient ways.
Fairs are beneath the dignity of art. To stand there in a booth and hawk your wares - it is just not how you sell art.
If, you know, all your life you're making films or whatever, and somehow along the way you lose meaning in whatever you're doing when you're making the films, they're just not the same as they used to be to you. That doesn't mean your life is over; it just means maybe go try to live a different life.
You try to get to know your character as best as you can before you start filming - what's written and not written.
There are different ways that kids who are gay take on the rejection and alienation they feel. The way I dealt with it was to say, 'You know what? You're imposing judgments on me and condemnations, but I don't accept them. I'm going to instead turn the light on you and see what your flaws are and impose the same judgmental standards on you.'
Lana Turner was adorable and funny. Jimmy Stewart was such a nice person. I quickly realized that if you're not a nice person, you're not going to last in this business. I mean, once your box office starts to drop off, like Veronica Lake, they'll get rid of you fast.
Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.
There is a difference between being arrogant about yourself as a person and being confident that your work has some value. The first is unattractive; the second is healthy and natural.
If your film is in English, it makes it that much easier to get a wide release.
If you want to have clean ideas, change them as often as your shirt.
I think what makes someone pretty amazing is being comfortable in your own skin.
We only call at ducks when their rear ends are towards us. If I'm looking at you and you call my name, then I know where the sound came from. But if you had your back to me and I holler and you turn around, you would assume somebody hollered. You want your decoys to represent the sound that you're making.
Well, if you're writing a thriller, you have to have your character in mortal jeopardy on page 1 or it's not a thriller.
In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don't really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face.
You know, 'You should have frozen your eggs at 20.' Well, who's thinking about that at 20?
If you want to win anything - a race, yourself, your life - you have to go a little berserk.
In every union roles are assumed, some traditional, some not. My husband used to pay his own bills, I used to call my own repairman. But as marriages progress, you surrender areas of your own competence, often without even knowing it.
The most important loan to pay is your student loan. It's more important than your mortgage, car and credit card payments. You cannot discharge student loan debt in the majority of cases.
In the India I was growing up in, history wasn't really a wise career option. People would joke and say, 'History's okay, but what's your actual job?' I didn't come from a privileged background and couldn't afford to be irresponsible, so I did the pragmatic thing and did a MBA.
When you go in to get your car serviced, they plug it in and tell you everything that happened for the last six months. I walk in and get a stress test from my doctor, and they make a conclusion based off of that. That doesn't make sense to me. I would much prefer to have all of the data about myself and less about my car.
I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.
