It's not easy to sit down and open yourself up and say, 'This is how much I love you,' you know? It's scary to do that.
I am ashamed to say that both my children knew Stalin before they knew Thomas the Tank Engine.
I don't ever think of myself as coming from a particular class because my father was working class but made his living as a newspaper foreign correspondent - someone of no fixed abode, as he used to say - who was as comfortable dining with the Mountbattens in India as he was having a pint with the boys. He was very gregarious.
I have a phrase I say: 'What the damn?' It's my favorite. It just came to me one day.
Just as there are moments when the words flow and it feels like the easiest job in the world, there are many more when I think I have nothing to say, and my journalism training taught me that writing is a job, that you write whether you are inspired or not, and that the only way to unlock creativity is to write through it.
If you were to find all the people I've worked with and ask them what they think of me, they're all just going to say, 'Oh, wonderful', and it'll just be a lot of blah.
Herman Melville was supposed to be an accountant. Van Gogh was meant to be an art dealer. I was meant to take the train into New York and work for a bank. To be an artist, you have to say goodbye to your family.
I've learned something about kids - they don't do what you say; they do what you do.
It's funny - I read that women look to chiseled-faced guys for one-night stands, and to round-faced guys for marriage. When I'm rounder in the face, I like to say, 'This is my long-term look.' Or 'This is my wife-and-kids look right here.'
'Nutty Professor' was me going, 'Say what you want to say, but I can do this, and you can't, and nobody else in the town can do this.'
I must be intellectually honest and say there is a great justice deficit among us. Not all Brazilians are treated equally.
I love to work. I know that sounds ridiculous to say because all people love to work, but I love the homework that goes into acting. I love figuring out different ways of playing a scene. I love the energy of being on set. I love not getting enough sleep because I have to wake up early in the morning.
Dude, I didn't say Jude Law can't act. I didn't say Jude Law was in bad movies. I just said he's in every movie.
I should like to think that we'll find peace on this Earth at some point and come to a collective consciousness of compassion for each other, where we say, 'Enough! Let us live as one!'
When the business really works is when we hear clients say, 'I've never had jeans that fit me until I got a pair from Stitch Fix.' We'll also hear, 'I would never have tried this dress on in a store.' It's not just about convenience. They're happier in their clothes.
When you're young, you say it how it is, and even your views are, like, 'This is totally the truth', 'cos you don't know any difference, so there's a real confidence in your way of thinking.
Being a public company is really terrible for most companies. I'd say Facebook and Google have done a pretty good job of standing up to the incredible quarterly pressure to hit numbers, but most companies - and I've observed a lot now - don't do a very good job of that.
I now say that the oldest man living never heard of the president of a great nation to come down to open electioneering for his successor. It is treating the nation as if it was the property of a single individual, and he had the right to bequeath it to whom he pleased - the same as a patch of land for which he had the patent.
It's unfortunate when people say you can't wear skirts or do item numbers, or a girl can't dress in a certain way. Are we going back to dark ages?
They say that every Jewish person is supposed to love one black person in his life. I'm glad Lorne Michaels chose me.
My mother couldn't take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling.
I don't claim to be a particularly good father. I'm flawed, let's say. I've certainly been affected by the experience of having kids... trying to be a father, at least. It's an amazing process. It's like songwriting: it's a complete mystery to me. I don't understand it - but I've certainly written about it.
If you could bring to me a majority of people to say that we're going to have $10 of spending cuts for $1 of revenue enhancement, put me in, coach.
It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you.
I always felt really guilty if I spent too much time playing video games. It's a colossal waste of time. And I can't say it's a very satisfying feeling at the end of the day, if you've spent eight hours playing a video game; you just end up feeling kind of spent, and used.
I think every parent knows that, like, boys and girls are different. And we just don't take that into account in schools on those things like required reading lists. 'Cause that was my experience, say, with my son, who had to read 'Little House on the Prairie' when he was in third grade.
I'm not one of these people who say how much better American drama is than English. I find it mostly too American, except for The Sopranos, which I think is the best thing.
Where I come from, you don't just say, 'Oh, I'm going to become an actor.' Talk like that and they think you're crazy.
When I give notes on a script, I say, 'Guys, I may drift, but it's part of the process.' So I'm aware that I'm drifting, but I'm grabbing a lot of stuff.
The biggest lie in the world is in answer to the question, 'How are you?' People usually say, 'I'm fine,' but that's mostly bull. Everyone wants to display being perfect. They tell themselves and their friends, 'I drive this car, I own this house, I'm fine.' People ball up into these tight wads of repression.
Whatever people want to say, we go out there every night, and we give tribute to the songs that my brother wrote, to Ronnie and Allen Collins and Steve Gaines and Leon Wilkeson and everybody. We pay tribute every night to those people who have gone on.
What I'm always trying to say to the consumer is: buy less, choose well, make it last.
I didn't get into rap to be no lyrical genius. I got into rap to feed my family and help the people in need around me, that's it. A lot of people say, 'Man, Waka Flocka ain't go no lyrics,' so I was like, 'Yeah, you right!'
I've always had a lot of time for servicemen. Yet there's been this bad relationship between civilians and the armed services. We say to soldiers, 'We want you when we want you, but stay away in peacetime. We're proud of you, but keep away from my daughter and don't come drinking in my pub.'
Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt.
The whole Twitter phenomenon is really indicative of what's happening in this country. And I say this in condemnation of myself as much as anyone else - we are growing into a nation that has no time, desire or capacity for truth. All we can handle is 140 characters of knowledge.
