With a father who is a fabulous craftsman, I was raised with the fundamental belief that it is only when you personally work with a material with your hands, that you come to understand its true nature, its characteristics, its attributes, and I think - very importantly - its potential.
Only a fighting nation can make itself responsible for world peace, and such a nation must organize its material resources and manpower with the highest possible degree of efficiency.
I don't believe truth is conveyed by style and presentation. I don't think that if it was grainy and full of handheld material, it would be any more truthful.
You don't really know when stand-up material is TV ready; it's just at what point you're willing to let it go and not work on it anymore. I'm not sure there is a point at which you think: 'And that is finished.'
I grew up in a Jewish family, and we have raised our children in a Jewish tradition. Religion gives a framework for moral enquiry in young minds and points us to questions beyond the material.
I get to do some unbelievably layered things. The material that I'm given is so complex, and I'm so grateful for it, so I welcome any opportunities to push boundaries.
I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories.
Cities might become biological entities, walls hung with curtains of algae that glow at night and sequester carbon, and floors made from tweaked cellular material that strengthens like bones as we walk on it.
The art of the bird is to conceal its nest both as to position and as to material, but now and then it is betrayed into weaving into its structure showy and bizarre bits of this or that, which give its secret away and which seem to violate all the traditions of its kind.
I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
By recycling pre-existing material, Shakespeare seemed to endorse a view common in his time, which has become even more entrenched in the 400 years since: that all the truly essential stories are already in the bag.
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
The big question is always, 'Eyes or lips?' I tend to go with the eyes because I've got a lot more material to work with now - and it saves me from reapplying lipstick! I'm a pretty low-maintenance person and it's too excessive to exaggerate both the eyes and lips.
Contemporary science is based on the philosophy of materialism, which claims that all reality is material or physical.
Racial humor was about 35% of my act when I first started. But I realized that it was a crutch. What brought it home was when another comedian said to me, 'If you changed color tomorrow, you wouldn't have any material.' He meant it as a put-down, but I took it as a challenge.
I get my most creative sort of energy after a show. So I love to go back to the hotel and compose new material. Generally in a rush, exactly. I have to get it out somehow, otherwise I can't sleep, you know.
I work a little bit like a sculptor. When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It's not about paper, it's not about forms. It's about space and material.
The value of Eric Foner's 'The Fiery Trial' lies in its comprehensive review of mostly familiar material; in its sensible evaluation of the full range of information already available about Abraham Lincoln and slavery; and in the deft thoroughness of its scholarship.
Good material is good material.
I've been fortunate enough to match up the material I'm producing with the right buyer, the company that will make it and that wants it, and that isn't saying yes to be nice, but is saying yes because they want and need that movie and it's going to be important on their slate.
I remember, working on 'Lost,' I learned very quickly the way that I had to approach the material or even ask the director questions. It was always prefaced with, 'Would it be wrong for me to assume?' Because I didn't know where my character on 'Lost' was going.
What I learned from my kids is that the greatest joy in life is not from material trappings, power, or visibility. The greatest joy comes from your kids. Nothing is even close to my kids in terms of bringing me joy.
When you're leading Marines, you don't screw around, so the comedy is limited in uniform. And when you're a comedian, you can't be heavy handed and come across with tales of gore or material that people won't understand, so I try to keep them separate.
With parody, you're referencing and sending up a particular genre, and mostly your material is going to be taken out of that genre.
Whenever a new technology is introduced into society, there must be a counterbalancing human response - that is, high touch - or the technology is rejected... We must learn to balance the material wonders of technology with the spiritual demands of our human nature.
Ideally, really ideally, you want to get to a place where you can have creative control over the material you do - choices, at least, anyway. And you want your choice of script and role. But do you really want your life to revolve around trying to maintain your privacy?
I don't think I'm morbid by nature. Serious writers have always written about serious subjects. Lighthearted material doesn't appeal to me, and I don't read it. I think I'm a realist, with a realistic sensibility of history and the tragedy of history.
Material interests are not the only guiding light.
One of the hardest things I've encountered whilst working on 'Pippin' is the consistent irony, as a reflection from the core material of the show, within my own life.
I went to the library and found lots of material about this time, about the Freedom March and what was going on down there in 1964.
I grew up in North Dakota around Dakota and Ojibwe people, and also small-town people in Wahpeton. Writers make few choices, really, about their material. We have to write about what comes naturally and what interests us - so I do.
I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.
Art has this ability to allow you to connect back through history in the same way that biology does. I'm always looking for source material.
Collective freedom is one devoid of material bondage and one that supports the institutions necessary for democracy.
My red line is Iran may not have a nuclear weapon. It is inappropriate for them to have the capacity to terrorize the world. Iran with a nuclear weapon or with fissile material that can be given to Hezbollah or Hamas or others has the potential of not just destabilizing the Middle East.
