I've always been curious about why one man jumps out of a foxhole with a grenade and charges a machine gun nest, and his buddy next to him sits there cowering. And my feeling is that the difference is tiny between the two.
I'm as prone to 'declinism' as the next over-mortgaged middle-aged guy.
Art shows and the institutions end up being the couriers for culture for the next generation and are an important component as well. It may seem ironic from one perspective, but I think if you look at my overall strategy, it's actually not out of step.
With a young-adult series, you need to get a lot of books out on the market quickly. Teenagers aren't going to wait years and years for the next book.
The pressure is always there to do my best. I feel happy that I have an audience that looks forward to my next project. I have to make sure that I deliver.
I always have confidence, whether I miss four in a row or make four in a row, that the next one's going in. To a coach, sometimes that might not make sense.
Galleries needn't be exactly like White Columns purely because times are bad again. But the idea of this special space could - should - help shape what comes next.
My style of working is I'll often be behind the camera, or right next to the camera yelling words at people, like, 'Say this, say this! Say it this way!' I'll straight-up give Anthony Hopkins a line reading. I don't care.
I don't tend to do category fiction very well. One of my problems when I was starting off was that publishers were hesitant to handle my books because they were never sure what I was going to do next.
It worries me about what happens if people in government are looking for that next job: 'Yeah I'm working now, not as much money as I could be making, but when I leave here, that's where I'm headed.' That ultimately infects whatever it is that they're doing.
It's not precisely that I'm not ambitious. I love what I do, and I love doing it, and I love getting better at it. I just am not willing to risk... much... to go on to the next level.
I choose my actors well and get to know the quirks of their personalities - and, most of all, I share humor with them. Then I keep my eyes open when they rehearse and perform, because you never know where the next stimulation comes from.
Whenever someone says I'm the next Oprah, I always respond, 'Child, there's only one Mahogany, and only one Oprah.' There are no others.
My hope for AI and Facebook in the next decade is you can sit down and tell Facebook, 'This is what I want to hear about today.' Like, I'm having a bad day; I want to hear some good news. If we make our products better, more people will use it - people use it more. It's fairly easy to understand.
I'm extraordinarily lucky to have so many friends across such a diverse group of people. One day I'll be at Oxford, the next at some complete idiot's lunch.
The next Bill Gates will not start an operating system. The next Larry Page won't start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't start a social network company. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them.
No one knows what the top-performing asset class will be next year. Lacking this prescience, your next-best solution is to own all of the classes and rebalance regularly.
When I first signed to RCA, I was sort of excited and shocked that it was happening. But over the next couple of years, it really started to feel like that game you play when you're a little kid - the one where you put your nose on a bat and then spin around and try to walk.
I'm a bargain shopper! I get a thrill from looking like a million dollars in an outfit that costs next to nothing.
If I see a great performance on television, onstage, in the movies, I go to work the next day with a renewed energy and less fear. These great artists take me out of my life and make me want to go there.
It's interesting, because I named my first album after my dad because I wanted to find him. My second album was named after my mom because I felt like I learned all my creative talents I learned from her. All the survival stuff, too. And then the next album is 'Maya,' which is not my real name. It's fake.
When you get into this industry and the restrictions placed on women, first, and then on women on color, next? Yeah, this business comes with its challenges. But I do not shy away from those challenges.
The thing that I look for in a script - I'm not looking for anything next because you never know where life's going to take you, so you can't just expect, 'I want to do this next.' So I'm not expecting anything; I'm just hoping.
I know what I'm going to write for the next three years. It's frustrating, because if I get a good new idea, I have to put it aside.
I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.
Sometimes I just wonder if I'm being led by variety. If one film leads me down one path, sometimes I just want to turn around and head the opposite way for the next project. I hope that's not the case, but sometimes I suspect that.
I was a terrible loser growing up. I took it far too seriously. There were water works if I lost. I would go home and break it down in angry detail: How did I lose? What could I do next time?
The poverty one still sees in America today is more shocking to me than anything I have seen in Ethiopia or Calcutta or Manila, and has made me, as someone living in a society of great wealth and someone who's never had to worry about the next meal, think seriously about what universal responsibility really means.
I was 16 and got my boyfriend's name tattooed on me. Don't do it. 'Cause it hurts. The moment you do it, the next month, the next year, you'll be broken up - trust me - and cover-ups hurt. You can show your love in other ways. Ink is not it. Write it on a piece of paper and mail it to him.
From now on, any flick I'm ever involved with, I conduct critics screenings thusly: 'You wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week.'
Your next SMS will probably be around longer, and remain more legible, than your tombstone. For, unlike your tombstone or even your mortal coil, your texts may be worth something.
Success on one project does not necessarily mean success in the next project. You've got to be prepared in everything you do.
I should say I am not much of a gamer - anymore. The reason for this is that I have to make a living, and my body requires vitamin D, and I've come to value the heady pleasures of human interaction over the temporary exhilaration of reaching the 'next level.'
Once you establish what activities your company needs to do, the next question is, 'How do these activities get accomplished?' i.e. what resources do I need to make the activities happen?
In 'The Next Three Days,' even though it was a prison breakout movie, I was asking myself, 'What would I do? How far would I go for the woman I loved? How far would I go, and what would I do when the person then told me that they were guilty? Could I still believe in them?' So it was very personal.
As actors, we want to choose somebody who has conflicts. I can't be always playing the girl next door. What's the challenge in that?
