Creating a body of mathematics is about intellectual labor, not some kind of transcendental revelation. There are plenty of important components of European fractal geometry that are missing from the African version.
As far as directors, I'm a big fan of any kind of Billy Wilder stuff. Anything he does.
The funny thing about me is I'm kind of schizophrenic, because after four or five nights in a row of going out to parties, I just have to be alone. I hate people and feel like they're keeping me from what I really want to do, like write a fabulous novel, which I probably never will.
I feel like people with their camera phones and Twitter and Facebook, this kind of question like, 'How can I be present and also document my presence or document what I'm doing?' is something that's always on my mind, even when I'm not working as a filmmaker.
I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.
Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.
I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.
When I started running, the pain barrier was very familiar to me, and I had no problem pushing beyond the pain. When for your whole life, every single workout, you are programmed to push beyond belief, it's really hard to just turn that off and kind of just be a social competitor.
When I finally finished the 'Two Suns' tour, which went on for quite a long time, I felt like a bit of a husk. And I remember thinking, 'I need to spend some time in one place, and just be at home.' So I guess the first year of that three and a half years was spent just trying to kind of get back to normal again.
Sometimes it feels like I've been in the business forever, but then other times, it feels like kind of a flash. Growing up, all I wanted to do was sing. All I wanted to do was get on a bus and ride around the country and sing for people and be a household name.
I did 'The Grey,' and it was very intense and emotional because we're in the wilderness, and it was always 30 degrees. You kind of lose your sense of reality in the fact that you're filming a movie.
Years ago, the writers were telling me that I'd make the Hall of Fame, so I kind of prepared a speech. But somewhere along in the 28 years, it got lost.
One fifth of human kind depend on fish to live. Today now 70 percent of the fish stock are over-exploited. According to FAO if we don't change our system of fishing the main sea resources will be gone in 2050. We don't want to believe what we know.
I kind of always struggled writing in Malay, because Malay is such a beautiful language. And it gets really hard, you know, if you want to make it into a song. You have to make it sound beautiful, use the right words.
I did a lot of choral music in high school, and that was kind of my primary, stable outlet for music because I didn't feel comfortable being a soloist. It was a cool, safe space for me musically.
Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a felony from owning a gun. Seems like kind of a good idea, no?
In a way, I created Utopia as a platform for me to become more of a guitar player and less of the kind of balladeer that people were taking me for.
I'm not very much of a 'name it and shame it' kind of guy.
You know, I'm not saying, 'Oh, because I play a good guy on TV, I need to suddenly be villainous in a movie.' I look at it more like: does this role has a kind of urgency for me in terms of, 'Can I not say no to it for whatever reason?'
It's one thing to have a scouting report and not be able to execute it, and it's completely different if you're able to kind of work your way through that report, attack guys certain ways, use different sequences, and be effective with them.
I'm an essayist. And this is a genre that has existed for a few thousand years. Ever heard of Cicero? So these rules that I'm working under are not mine but rather were established by writers who recognized the difference between the hard research of journalism and the kind of inquiry of mind that characterizes the essay.
On the subject of literary genres, I've always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I'd love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.
I definitely enjoy the kind of magic that happens being on stage with a group when everything's working. The vibe when that's happening gets even better if the audience is involved and you can feel that interaction. That's something you don't get with your headphones on in a studio; it's much different.
Jackie Chan is a very good comedy/martial arts star. He does one kind of martial arts that Jet Li doesn't know how to do and Jet Li does a martial art that Jackie Chan doesn't know how to do. You can both go to two Chinese restaurants, but both can have different kinds of food.
The way we experience history and time in all its forms shifted quite massively between 1989 and 2001 - to the point where contrivances like decades are now kind of silly.
I always wish I had another shot at it. But, listen, 'Godzilla' is something that I grew up loving. We worked hard to go make one. We kind of blew it. I think everyone gets one.
We all have that desire to be kind of wild and bad.
I didn't have an exhibition anywhere until I was 30. My first exhibition was at 30, and then for my first show in America, I'm 50. It's kind of all right: I'm just a slow burner.
I've always had this in a kind of worst-case dark imagination. I want to know what the dark form in the window is. I want to know what the noise under the staircase is.
For me, you have to not have a formula. You have to not even sit down and say, 'I want to write right now.' It has to just kind of come out. It's not something you can plan.
Seeing a woman project the kind of aggression that you have to project as a comic just rubs me wrong.
Well, I think that everybody is kind of a nerd at heart.
All you have to be is kind. That's all you need. Once you've got that, it virtually rules out everything else.
And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.
God is so big. It's a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we're small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.
I have an incredible relationship with dogs. I'm kind of a dog-whisperer.
