San Francisco is really fun and liberal, and it's my kind of politics. It's like being Jewish in front of Jewish people.
I like the accidental nature of being in the real world.
Nothing can motivate me any more than I'm already motivated. It just can't happen. Me being motivated was never a factor. Never.
I'm still very much an atheist, except that I don't necessarily see religion as being a bad thing. So, that's a weird thing that I'm struggling with that seems to be offending both atheists and people that are religious.
Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
Being a lawyer in New York sucks because you're working eighty, sometimes a hundred hours a week.
All the principal people in the town are concerned in the slave trade, and their chief wealth consists in the number of slaves they possess; therefore there is little chance of the trade being, for many years, totally abolished.
Being performers, that's what we do: We put on shows and want people to watch.
I think half the battle is just being comfortable in front of the camera - and I already am, doing so many videos and interviews, so then it just takes that extra step of trying to get into character.
I love being a storyteller. I love telling stories.
Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.
I've never been comfortable around groups of guys when it gets into the putting-down. My past being a kind of geek - it kind of turns into an attack on the weakest of the group.
I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.
I had the honor of speaking with Asimov. The album ended up being something not directly related to Asimov, but related instead to the concept of the power of robotics.
Before acting, I wanted to become a journalist. I also toyed with the idea of being a chef - but that's only when people asked me what I wanted to be. In fact, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I didn't ever believe that I was good enough to be come one.
In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters, and I think that is the key to it right there. It is monsters; it is learning about them: it is both thrill and safety. You can think of them without being desperately afraid because they are not going to come into your living room and eat you. That is 'Jaws.'
The last show we played, I was straight as a die. It did feel weird not to be hiding behind alcohol or dope, but being focused was... good.
I think everything that happens to you becomes a part of what you end up doing and being and standing for.
I hate to generalize, but in general, both men and women suffer from ageism. Men much less because men gain power as they get older. Women lose power as they get older. Men are seen as gaining experience and being distinguished. Sons look forward to replacing their fathers.
The art of being a slave is to rule one's master.
Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.
Definitely, it's hard being a young artist and being taken seriously.
I have no fear of being less beautiful, I've always been afraid of not being beautiful.
There was a point where there was a vision that we'll get to a certain age, and then we'll retire and be happy. Now that's like, that's being compromised every day. So I think we have to start living happy now and stop waiting for the forty years because by then you'll be so sick, you wouldn't enjoy it anyway.
Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.
As soon as I made it about being healthy and shifted my focus away from the scale, the weight started to come off. I keep track of my body by how my jeans fit - and how I feel.
Touring on 'Folie' was like being the last act at the vaudeville show: We were rotten vegetable targets in clandestine hoods.
It's an established fact. Some women can't stand being pregnant, getting big and bloated, and hauling around a giant stomach, and some women, for reasons probably understood by Darwin, love it.
When I first saw tap dancing, I immediately got it: the righteousness of being able to make so much noise with your feet!
We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
I eventually grew into a pre-teen Marilyn Munster, that being the only option I could find that allowed for a) blonde hair, b) a fondness for frilly pink things and wearing ribbons in your hair, and c) hanging out with monsters.
I wouldn't mind being in an American film for a laugh, but I certainly don't want to be in Thingy Blah Blah 3, if you know what I mean.
After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
I was always crazy about New York, dependent on it, scared of it - well, it is dangerous - but beyond that there was the pressure of being young and of not yet having done work you really liked, trademark work, breakthrough work.
