I don't know how to speak to celebrities. Every time I talk to Alan Menken, I say something stupid and I have to apologize.
We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We're inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, 'Gimme, gimme, gimme,' you will always be in short supply.
I know with me, you really have to, like, pound me over the head to say, 'I like you. I really like you' to get me to see it. I think if you're too passive, you just fall into that friend role. And that's hard to break out of.
People go into a gallery, and they're afraid to express their opinions about art. No one's afraid to say, 'Keanu Reeves was bad in that movie.' We see so many films that we can tell who's faking it. But with art, we can't always tell.
I would say that it's mainly about the director. It's a hard quality to find, but I always know whether I want to do something or not. The character is important to me, as is getting to work with people that I feel like I can learn from and make a great movie with.
I'm not going to get somewhere and say, 'OK, I'm done.' Success is never final; I'll just keep on going. The same way as failure never being fatal. Just keep going. I'm going to the stars and then past them.
Just like food, you could think peanut butter is your favorite food for 5,000 years and then be like, 'I actually like burgers better', you know? I was just trying to say that kids and people in general don't have to label themselves and say, 'I'm straight' or 'I'm gay' or 'I'm whatever.'
Like most men, I can't say I am thrilled my hair's falling out, but then, if I really cared, I suppose I would wear a wig, get transplants, or start taking special pills, so I am obviously just putting up with it.
Kenny Lonergan, as a filmmaker, doesn't tell stories so much as he observes them, which is to say, his films don't come pre-digested. You have to bring your own enzymes. It's a more gripping and challenging experience.
I would say some of the food I talk about that I really enjoy, like cake and bacon, I eat a lot less than I portray in my act. But that stuff that I dislike, it's pretty sincere.
I am a fairly orthodox Christian. Every Sunday, I say and do my best to mean the whole of the Creed, which is a series of propositions. But it is still a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary.
It seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America's power. It has been the symbol of our great nation. We look at the symbol and we say 'this is one nation under God.'
I didn't even know for years that people ever even got paid for this, because they don't teach you that in school. They don't say Shakespeare got a check.
I saw this DJ playing music and saying things to the kids. They would answer him back, and I say, 'That's a great idea.'
I started composing when I was around 13, and back then, people used to say that I needed to be a composer or a performer, but I can't be good at both of them. I could never understand why anyone would say that. Jellyroll did both, Bessie Smith did both, and so did I.
At this point, I can't say what network would be picking it up, but I know that it would be a success.
We're a pretty emotional bunch. You know, someone doesn't say hello to you one day and you're like, 'I cannot believe the gall!'
The health of the planet is at stake, because the cruelty and the waste that accompanies the slaughter of billions of animals each year literally infects us all. We could consume healthy plant-based food produced at almost infinitely less cost. What does that say, really, about us and what we're doing... to animals and to ourselves?
I've heard people say that God is the gift of desperation, and there's a lot to be said for having really reached a bottom where you've run out of any more good ideas or plans for everybody else's behavior; or how to save and fix and rescue; or just get out of a huge mess, possibly of your own creation.
The only thing I can say that is wonderful about my mother is she forced me to learn three verses of the Bible every day of my life, and I've read the Bible now five times and it taught me the English language.
People say there's a book in everyone but I'm not sure there is. There might be a pamphlet in me.
Hallucinatory - that's just the way everyday life is, in Colombia. All the time, you say to yourself, did I just see that?
The impossible - we are told - cannot be achieved. To overcome the 'impossible,' we need to use our wits and be fearless. We need to break the rules and to circumvent - some would one say to cheat.
What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.
I would very much like to be one of those writers who have something really clear in their head to say, and throughout their life they promote this idea in their works.
When someone is wearing a dress that makes her look fat, don't say 'That's a great dress.' It always comes off badly.
Before we took down the tree each year, Dad would always say a prayer that we would be together the next Christmas. I cling to that prayer, which serves as a reminder that it's important to be grateful in the present for the people you love because, well, you never know.
I have to say that deporting people and calling them 'bad hombres,' then kicking families out with visa violations, upsets me.
In the whole course of our work at the theatre we have been, I may say, drenched with advice by friendly people who for years gave us the reasons why we did not succeed... All their advice, or at least some of it, might have been good if we had wanted to make money, to make a common place of amusement.
We would say we would play every pay toilet and use our own change. Across America and across the world, we just kept going and going.
We take a lot of pictures with fans, and when they walk away, their parents say, 'Who was that?'
Music is very nebulous, and you can conjure up a lot of moods with music. But lyrics - they're a lot more tangible. They're much more specific. And you want to say something meaningful and creative and artistic and that tells a story and that takes people someplace else.
I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, 'It's all your fault.' Your reaction is, 'It's not my fault.' But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it.
My daughter, Grace, was not killed by a gun. She died suddenly at age 5 from a virulent form of strep. As I stood stunned in a church at her memorial, one of the hardest things I heard someone say was, 'I'm going to go home and hug my child a little tighter.' 'Well, good for you,' I thought. 'I'm going to go home and scream.'
I want to say something in a tough-love kind of way about crop insurance. Let's face it: You don't buy insurance on your house hoping it will burn down. Neither do we want to buy crop insurance and hope our crop fails so we can file.
You drift through life and let things happen to you, or go by design and say, 'This is what I'm intended to do.'
