It's a source of great sadness to me that my father died without having seen me do anything worthwhile. He was constantly having to make excuses for me.
Not houses finely roofed or the stones of walls well builded, nay nor canals and dockyards make the city, but men able to use their opportunity.
I'd rather make an interesting film that gets people talking, that maybe some people hate, than make the kind of 'entertaining' film that everyone feels ambivalent about.
If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.
Short cuts make long delays.
You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter.
There's an inherent thing in me where, if things are going too smooth, I'll sabotage the hell out of them, just to make the music more of a sanctuary.
The goal is to have to do the shot again because the camera guy shook a little bit as he was laughing. Without that happening, I'm not happy because there's nothing better for me than a world that everybody's just trying to make each other laugh.
You can get digital technology that almost is film quality, and go make little films and do everything you can to find a little understanding of your own voice and it will grow - Don't take no for an answer - Take every opportunity you can to do something.
I like hip-hop music, but some of the lyrics make me want to cry.
The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise.
I try to write the books I would love to come upon that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness - and that can make me laugh.
All the movies that I make in some ways have to be the story of my life. There are different chapters in my life.
From the time that I can remember, I worked to make money - either baby-sitting, or one year wrapping gifts at a department store at Christmas, so I could have my own money.
Well, our concern has to do with the period prior to 9/11, up to and including the catastrophe that occurred. And thank goodness, we're not obliged to make assessments of what's going on now and deal with these current events.
For me, the film has to be incredibly bad to make me want to pack up and leave.
I want my whole life to be a great work of art, not just my art. And that means paying attention to my entire life and trying to make sure my whole life is balanced.
The next thing is: we can make IBM even better. We brought IBM back but we're gunning for leadership.
It's really rare as a teenager to be offered a role that actually resembles what it's like to be a teenager, because there are so many stereotypes that might be attractive to watch, but make you think: 'Who is that? Who has that life at 16?'
There are three things we need to do for a band. We need to make a great record; we need to get the record played; and we need to find an audience for the live shows.
When I came out to Hollywood in 1985, I thought that I would be sitcom star. I'm a tall, skinny, goofy guy. I thought that I would make a great funny neighbor, or wacky office mate, in a sitcom.
I had more friends on my hockey team than I did on my soccer team. I might have been better at soccer, to be honest. But I think it was more the friendship, and my family was more of a hockey family than a soccer family, so when I had to make a decision, I tried hockey, and it turned out to be a good decision.
Let come what comes, and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens.
It's the thing I struggle with every day: the mental diligence and stamina needed to sit in front of the computer, open the file, start writing and to keep doing so, word after word, until I've created the next story. A combination of learning disability and chronic health issues make that the hardest thing for me.
I realized that, all along, my theory was right: Make music that you want to hear, and instead of having fans that one day might criticize or abandon you, your fans aren't even fans. They're people with tastes similar to yours. They're friends you haven't met yet.
You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.
One of the things that make our version that much more heartbreaking is that even though I am playing a 24-year-old I look much younger. I look like a child.
If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?
But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story.
I think the struggle, whenever you make a film or television movie based on a real person's life, is finding a dramatic arc that will hold an audience's attention.
We're trying to make a movie that's interesting.
The studios don't seem to foster good writing. They're not so interested in that, but they're more interested in what worked most recently. They're definitely very serious about making money, and that's not a wrong thing, but you don't have to make money the same way all the time.
If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.
I told myself, 'When I grow up, I want to make pictures that can inspire and nourish people.' Immediately, when I was 10, I started photographing nature. I built a darkroom. My first really good darkroom, not just down in the cellar, was when I was 14.
Usually I can go for three or four weeks and then I start to bake cakes or make jewellery and I think, 'hang on a minute, I'm obviously bored rigid. I need to get back out there.'
We are in a culture where it's so easy to just turn things off that you don't like. And I think that doesn't make you a well-rounded person or artist. You have to be able to take the good with the bad and have opinions on things!
