Now I have to motivate myself much more than I had previously.
I want to do it for myself. It's my goal and dream. All I can ask for is to get the chance and go out there and do the best I can, be as ready as I can.
I am an extremely private person. I always feel that I come across as a caricature of myself whenever I do interviews.
I don't consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.
I'm just not that comfortable writing so much about myself.
I consider myself very lucky, essentially - I was put into a pop group even though my musical taste was very niche before.
I wanted to have a reaction from the audience. I wanted to be able to talk to somebody, and not be talking just to myself. That's when I did 'The Conformist,' 'Last Tango in Paris,' etc. And I found it was incredibly rewarding, something new.
I'll talk to myself out loud a lot.
The reason why I meditate and pray in general is just to remind myself that it is not about me.
You know that day after day of, Oh God what am I going to do with myself feeling? The fear of the emptiness that it implies keeps me going.
I'm very happy with my life and career, but I do find myself having serious attacks of nostalgia, and I don't quite know why. Even though I've got to travel the world and do amazing things, I still want to go back to my teenage years and change little aspects of it. It's strange, but it does continue to bug me.
I found myself getting more publicly shy when the gala events and big crowds started. Some people embrace it. To me, it's not worth enough to risk my private life being public.
I definitely consider myself a Christian. There's things that I believe in, there's things I have a self-belief on. I know I got a great relationship with God and the universe. I just believe in being a righteous person and karma. Doing unto others as you would have done unto you. I really want to help teach that.
I only write music for myself, I don't try and appeal to anyone else.
I became an entrepreneur as a child. I liked the art of the deal whether I was mowing lawns or selling candy or promoting clubs at the age of 16. I understood early on the importance of knowing my numbers and surrounding myself with the best people.
I find composition difficult. I never thought of myself as someone who can crank it out. I can't crank it out - I have to dig it out the hard way. In some sense, you become more confident in your technical apparatus, but it becomes harder to do something you haven't done already.
I don't have any preconceived ideas of myself. I just take things as they come.
I returned from my last L.A. visit to find myself tipping the scales like Homer Simpson when he tries to gain enough weight to qualify as disabled to be allowed to work from home. All I was missing was his kaftan and Fat Guy Hat. So, I decided it was time to diet.
I love throwing myself into people who actually lived. It gives me a lot to research and a lot to know.
I was never a practicing Muslim. But I do consider myself a Muslim.
I wanted to contribute my time, myself, my knowledge, my love, because Haiti is my everything.
If I was as relaxed as what I perceived myself to be, I would not be able to multi-task the way I multi-task.
I consider myself pretty fearless, but the one thing I have always been frightened of is cancer.
I look at the money I'm about to spend on myself and ask if IKEA's customers could afford it.
My whole goal is to make good records and keep myself inspired and able to accomplish what I need to accomplish.
I think of myself as a storyteller.
Movies are a collaboration, I feel, so I didn't think of myself as an authoritative figure as much.
I connect fashion to other peoples' elegance, but not my own. I don't think I've ever felt elegant. I've felt appropriate, but never elegant, and I wonder what that must be like. I like it when other people are elegant - I prefer it - but I can't do it myself. I honestly think it's some form of autistic disorder.
I don't think of myself as a powerful woman.
I do spend a lot of weekends on the road. I have to pace myself. It can be pretty busy, but I'm not out in the Afghan desert with 70 pounds on my back, away from my family for a year at a time. I keep a good perspective on it.
I never really marketed myself, so each job I was given was a new marketing tool, and that would be the way I marketed myself.
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.
If you don't like an ad, why should anybody else?... We're all consumers... That's why I always create commercials for myself first of all. I am the consumer I know best. If I think it's a great commercial, I figure the rest of the people might think so, too. I haven't been wrong so far.
In my 40s - when I was giving to the Red Cross, United Jewish Appeal and other charities - I said to myself, this is all well and good, but these are really amorphous things, and maybe there are some causes out there that I really give a damn about.
I was very lucky in that my parents were very broad-minded. Because they had come from another country and hadn't been able to fulfill their dreams, they wanted me to be more of myself, if you know what I mean.
I do this for the sake of myself. It's a selfish process. I don't really have any expectations from anyone for your comments or your reviews or your previews.
