As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.
I was getting a little bored with my hair. It's kind of a symbolic thing, just getting rid of the past, moving forward. It's amazing what a reaction you get when you cut your hair.
Evil comes in through the cable and through the Internet. We look forward to the advent of driverless cars. But they can be hacked. You could be riding along, and some 14-year-old in Romania takes over your car, so you end up running the lights and losing your brakes or, worse, listening to Eminem. What's the purpose?
We're talking about growing up in regular families, dreaming about better things, instead of popping bottles in the club and spending a lot of money that you don't have while living in your mother's basement.
I think growing up on a farm in a certain amount of isolation, with not a lot of friends nearby, makes you entertain yourself and kind of grows your imagination - being alone is quite good for all that. You make up stories, talk to the animals, let them be an audience, a bunch of cows.
Each performance and each film is what it is. It's right and belongs within that moment. You look at it and try to make it fit your particular part of your character and your particular film.
If you're like me and love chatting about your latest box set addiction, then Sky Box Sets Club has everything you'll need to kick start conversations with friends on Twitter or in the office the next day.
I detest computers. If you had a device like that 30 years ago that froze up constantly, misbehaved constantly, lost your information and screwed up when you needed it the most, it would have been laughable.
If you value your wins and you value what you've done over the course of your career, then you wouldn't want people harboring over a loss, even though you fought extremely well.
A certain kind of film is a big theatrical film and a certain kind of film isn't. It doesn't bother me so much that you can pick your format.
The only time I've tried to make plans, the cosmic sledgehammer has intervened and something else has happened. You just have to wait and see what comes your way, so that's what I do.
Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.
I went to film school at UT Austin. I learned a lot, and that school's good for puking up all your bad movies early and quick. But ultimately, no one can teach you to be an artist.
I think art comes out of meaningful experiences, and it's hard to make art when your meaningful experience is getting into your electric car and driving from your fancy house in the Hills to your fancy job in the Valley.
The orphan in children's literature allows the child protagonist to move the story forward themselves. I think that, however happy a family, every intelligent child thinks: 'How did I come to be born to these parents?' - it is about finding your place in the world.
Occupy yourself in beholding and bewailing your own imperfections rather than contemplating the imperfections of others.
I just don't understand how you can not be concerned about your appearance. From time to time I'm vilified as the person who cares about the look of a teapot - and it's not that I believe my taste is superior, I just can not believe that other people don't care.
The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.
Life is a story. You and I are telling stories; they may suck, but we are telling stories. And we tell stories about the things that we want. So you go through your bank account, and those are things you have told stories about.
If you sell a physical product, you have a lot of Q4 upside and unpredictability, but now you have to manage your cash to get to Q4 so that you can invest in building inventory to over-perform.
Sometimes the transition from being in control of your life to having absolutely no control is swift, but other times it is so gradual that you wonder exactly when it truly began.
I don't worry about whether I'm making a masterpiece, because I know that if you get just one of those in a lifetime, you should get down on your knees and say 'Thank you!'
It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle. Hope is desire, feeling, and investing in a projection of something that doesn't yet exist. At its best, you witness its alchemy in your life, turning something that was once in the mind into reality. At its worst, it's delusion.
With clearly defined roles and a focus on communication, it's much easier to make your company come across as well-organized and on top of things - because it actually is.
You need to get outside of your comfort zone to write songs that are interesting, songs that are compelling, songs that are different from what other people are writing.
We were raised in a family that had high aspirations for their children, and those high aspirations tended to be along the lines of service and high-minded beliefs, living up to your responsibilities. Both my Danforth grandparents admired service very much.
When you put all your eggs in one basket, you've got a problem.
If you're a director, your entire livelihood and your entire creativity is based on your self-confidence. Sometimes that's dangerously close to arrogance.
You don't need someone destroying you when your own people are the worst messengers possible. And this is what black people in America have not come to grips with.
Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty. It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong.
Art should be witty, like a good Eddie Murphy movie, to make your life a little easier and better.
Love your friends' kids, even if you don't want or like children. Just do it.
Your employees have lots of opinions about everything - your strategy and vision; the state of the competition; the quality of your products; the vibe in the workplace. There are tons of things you can learn from them.
What I had heard about TV is that it's very rigid - that you have to hit your mark, look a certain way, do certain things, that there is no freedom artistically - and that's my worst nightmare. I don't work well in rigid environments.
Someone once told me that every minute a murder occurs, so I don't want to waste your time, I know you want to go back to work.
To sustain your belief through situations that completely undermine it is quite something.
