Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket.
It's interesting: I went 25 years without watching a single television show. I was one of those people, because I was so inside how a television show was made, if I would turn on somebody else's show, I would sit there and analyze it, like, 'Oh, so they had four hours in this location and had to get out and the number of set-ups, etc.'
Somebody has been cashing checks, and they've been bouncing back on us. And these people, the poor class of Negroes and the poor class of white people, they're getting tired of it.
I cannot believe that violence depicted onscreen actually causes people to act out violently. That's oversimplifying the issue. If somebody commits a violent act after seeing violence in a movie, I think the question that needs to be asked is: would that person still have committed the act if he had not seen a violent film?
There's no such thing as a perfect guy. I think it would be strange if somebody was absolutely everything you always wanted, because then there'd be no challenge. Also, you'd feel inferior.
Studios, because they are investing a great deal of money in movies, they want a guarantee that when they hire somebody that person can deliver for them. Everything is fear based, so they pigeonhole people. But I've written everything, from Westerns to sci-fi to dramedy, I've done it all.
I don't believe in trying to be somebody you're not - just be a bigger, better version of yourself.
Work hard for what you want because it won't come to you without a fight. You have to be strong and courageous and know that you can do anything you put your mind to. If somebody puts you down or criticizes you, just keep on believing in yourself and turn it into something positive.
If the songs I'm writing can offer anything to somebody, I'd like to give myself the opportunity to deliver that.
Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody's head.
I work with a group of actors, and whenever one of us has an audition, we all get together, and we all work together on it. I think it takes us back to our film school days, our drama school days, us just working together and figuring it out because somebody else is going to see something in the material that you won't see.
I do still get the odd fan letter about The Good Life, clearly written by somebody aged 18, who says: Will you send a photograph? And I think: Maybe it's kinder not to. I'm deeply into my 50s now.
Maybe one of the most heartening findings from the psychology of pleasure is there's more to looking good than your physical appearance. If you like somebody, they look better to you. This is why spouses in happy marriages tend to think that their husband or wife looks much better than anyone else thinks that they do.
Let us give publicity to H.I.V./AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of H.I.V./AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary.
But the good news is that out in the countryside, just about every place that's got a zip code has somebody or some group of people battling the economic and political exclusion that Wall Street and Washington are shoving down our throats.
She's in a situation she tried to, that's what's complicated. She followed orders; she called off the raid. This is a dangerous situation. Somebody in DC police went ahead and started.
In the age of the internet when everybody's a pundit, we're still gonna need somebody there to go talk to the colonels, to be on the ground in Baghdad and stuff and that's very expensive.
I did bully somebody. I was insecure.
I'd still like to see 'Survivor' minus the planned show-biz parts. That would be the purest form of show business - I want to see someone so hungry that they eat somebody else's foot.
I can remember, when I was in college, irritating deeply somebody I was going out with, because he would ask me what I was thinking and I would say I was thinking nothing. And it was true.
I have no problem with battling for a position. I have no problem trying to beat somebody out. It's a sport, competition, so I'm used to it.
If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.
In all honesty, if somebody asked me the secret of auditioning for Americans, I don't know. Often, I do what's called self-taping for America. I go over there quite a lot to sit in a room and do stuff in front of people. You feel like a performing monkey. It's bizarre.
Anybody depending on somebody else's gods is depending on a fox not to eat chickens.
I've been blessed to be somebody that's been climbing that success mountain top for years of hard work, you know, but now it's all connecting. And now, the whole world is watching, you know what I'm saying, and it feels good 'cause it's good energy. This is all positive vibes, and good vibes and good energy, so it feels incredible.
I don't have the luxury of having a dog myself because I travel too much, but I love walking and cuddling somebody else's dog.
If you're a father of a child who dies, it's an experience that never leaves you. It scars you forever and ever and ever. And so when I do any kind of story with somebody who's in the same position as my daughter was, there's no question that something comes out of me and embraces that story in a way that only a father who lost a child could.
When somebody has an enormous success in this culture, people start asking two questions, which are 'What are you doing now?' and 'How are you going to beat that?' And I have to say, I love the assumption that your intention is to beat yourself constantly - that you're in battle against yourself.
In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.
What I'm concerned about is making sure that every single time somebody who grew up with us goes off to a different platform or a different device, we're going to be there with a Univision-branded product of some kind.
I terribly miss - we all miss, I think - somebody like the great producer Irving Thalberg. He had a foot in both camps: He understood us creative people. And he understood the money people.
Not every song has to be about love and tenderness, sometimes you have those strictly physical feelings for somebody and it's okay to have those feelings.
The act of being nice to somebody at Starbucks is actually a huge thing. It's a real change you can effect in somebody's life every day.
I think winter wear is communal. You get some gloves and a scarf from a lost-and-found box, wash them, wear them for a while until you lose them. Then somebody else does the same thing.
Don't try to be like somebody else. You'll be miserable. You need to be yourself, and don't ever get a big head.
If somebody came up with a really good idea, everyone would back it. Especially when we did the show, we had a real dedication that, if you were in somebody else's scene, everyone worked their hardest to make that scene good.
