I had heard that Robert Duvall was interested in doing 'Lonesome Dove,' and he's one of those actors with whom I'd work on any project. So I tracked down the script and started to bug the producer, Dyson Lovell, to get in there.
Things slow down, the ball seems a lot bigger and you feel like you have more time. Everything computes - you have options, but you always take the right one.
I'm super down with being irresponsible. I'm just trying to make sure my lack of responsibility no longer hurts people.
I did something a lot of people will have to do in this economy if they want to eventually land their dream job. I turned down an offer to take a high-paying position in another field because it wouldn't fulfill me.
Men's magazines in the period immediately after World War II were almost all outdoor-oriented. They were connected to some extent in the male bonding that came out of a war... And what I tried to create was a magazine for the indoor guy, but focused specifically on the single life: in other words, the period of bachelorhood before you settle down.
I don't get inoculations or take anti-malaria tablets when I go abroad; I take the homeopathic alternative, called 'nosodes', and I'm the only one who never goes down with anything.
If you ask an introvert a question, wait until she thinks about it. Introverts think before speaking, not through speaking. If you want to get to the good stuff, you need to slow down.
Hollywood is a factory. You have to realize that you are working in a factory and you're part of the mechanism. If you break down, you'll be replaced.
I have turned down so many endorsements. My phone never stops ringing.
I don't like narrowing my readers down - there's not a particular age or gender or nationality. I suppose I'm aiming at the child I was.
Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.
In regards to being a fashion aficionado, there's a certain amount of taking yourself seriously in the professional world. The self-effacing person can't completely go down the serious road. But I design, and love when things are beautiful.
I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can't be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they're not getting some other matter.
It's been said of me that I must get out of bed every morning and go cartwheeling down the road. Of course it's not true. There certainly was a time in my 20s when I wanted a bit of freedom, and I found that difficult, but if I'm ever having a time when I'm feeling sorry for myself, something always jolts me back.
When you get older, your health becomes important to you, things start breaking down, you've always got a different ache or pain.
Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family.
I went to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which was great but very different from a typical university. They sat us down in the first week and said: if you want to party, you've come to the wrong place. There was no lie-ins or skipping lectures.
You can't just give a speech and expect people to fall down and agree with you.
I think Jerry Lee is sad. As a musician, he was far more talented than Elvis Presley. Everybody down in Memphis knows that. Elvis became a movie star because he was beautiful. Not that Elvis wasn't talented, but Jerry Lee Lewis was incomprehensibly talented as a musician.
When you fall into a black hole, everything that falls in after you over millions of years, as seen by you inside the black hole, comes pounding down on you in a fraction of a second, because of the enormous differences of time flow.
I've learned from my dealings with Johnny Carson that no matter what kind of friendship you think you have with people you're working with, when the chips are down, it's all about business.
People's hands fascinate me. It's tempting to look at a businessman's left hand and see if there's an indentation from a missing wedding ring. Or maybe there's a tan line and the skin is pressed down where's he's worked a ring off his finger.
In my day, when you called on a girl, her mother was always hollering down to see if she was still unraped, the maid would look in, her father would shuffle his feet in another room. Today the boy calls up, says, 'Meet you at the back door of Stern's.'
'The Simpsons' from the very beginning was based on our memories of brash '60s sitcoms - you had a main title theme that was bombastic and grabbed your attention - and when you look at TV shows of the 1970s and '80s, things got very mild and toned down and... obsequious.
You don't write on tour; it takes all your concentrating to make the gig - that's survival technique. Afterwards, you run around town to find interesting hipsters and go to all the interesting spots. You got to go to every hotspot until everything has closed down.
I don't know why femininity should be associated with weakness. Women should be free to express who they are without thinking, 'I need to act like a man, or I need to tone it down to be successful.' That's a very good way to keep women down.
I was thinking of writers living in East Europe before the Berlin Wall came down. They wrote fantastic stuff but were dealing with a situation that was almost impossible to deal with, but they found a way.
I was living in Evanston, Illinois and I was taking theater classes down the street, and our theater school was kind of affiliated with an agency, and so I went on one audition for whatever that movie was, 'My Stepmother is an Alien' or whatever it was, and 'Roseanne' was my second audition.
The brilliant thing about swimming is that, while you're doing it, there's nothing else you could be getting on with, like the ironing or sorting out the children. My mind goes into free-float mode; some of the best ideas for plots come into my head while I'm ploughing up and down the pool.
I turned down 'Cuckoo's Nest' four times before Jack got it.
During 'Race 2,' I had to lean down completely because there was a lot of action scenes in it.
At one point, there wasn't a black quarterback in the NFL. When you start winning, then you start seeing more. Jumping up and down and screaming and calling people names is not going to change anything.
Most musicians are normal people who want to hang out and are really down to earth.
That's why I hate the outlines and treatments, because all you get are cliches. If you put things down on paper as your plan, it's very hard to get those ideas out of your head and do something better.
I think my level of fame will drop back down. I think it'll recede. In fact, I know it will. That's life on Planet Earth. And I'm okay with that. Besides getting tables at restaurants and special treatment at the airport, what else is there?
I did once shatter a chandelier. I was singing with my college choir in Wales. I was the soloist and I hit the high note and there was this massive bang and all this glass came down from the ceiling. I'd like that to be my party trick if I can perfect it.
