Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country.
I know a lot of people in the business recommend the many Story Structure seminars being offered here, but I point to them as the single biggest contributor to lousy scripts.
For a long time, I really struggled with the idea of being an actor because I really felt that I should be in the Peace Corps.
You go to a show, and there's no food at all, so if you're doing shows back to back, you can forget eating. I remember standing up in the bath one day, and there was a mirror in front of me, and I was so thin! I hated it. I never liked being that skinny.
I would never accuse the Irish people of being in any way stupid.
Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being.
I've always earned my own money and enjoy being independent. It's how I was brought up.
The idea of being in the State Department was exciting. On the other hand, I always had in the back of my mind going into politics. If I stayed in Washington, I might end up a government hack.
I could do nice, but it's just not as much fun. Being nice isn't my biggest goal in life. I'm trying to be honest about who I am, and that's not always nice. I'm not always the world's cheerleader.
Basically, what you really want to do is try to engage the viewer's body relation to his thinking and walking and looking, without being overly heavy-handed about it.
No One Is Alone by Stephen Sondheim is all about thinking for yourself and being your own person.
For the longest time, I didn't even want to admit I was serious about music. Before the Shins, I would tell myself, 'Oh, I'm going to figure something out someday.' I had this romantic vision of being this old dude maybe making guitars or something.
A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.
I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.
There was a friend of ours who worked with a girl who had said she would consider being a surrogate. We met her and right away she was awesome. We were looking for someone who could take care of themselves and it was pretty clear she could.
At its very core, virtual reality is about being freed from the limitations of actual reality. Carrying your virtual reality with you, and being able to jump into it whenever and wherever you want, qualitatively changes the experience for the better. Experiencing mobile VR is like when you first tried a decent desktop VR experience.
I don't know if a pro wrestling career prepares you for Hollywood. When you get out there, and you're in an arena for 20,000 people or 90,000 people, it's a lot different than being on a quiet set with 100 people, so I think you get used to dealing with cameras.
Music to me is about being honest, and it's what I've always pictured music as. I don't see the point of expressing yourself if you are going to be cryptic about it.
My overwhelming memory of being a child is the huge amount of love I felt for my mum. She was my everything, because she was both my mum and my dad.
After a few games I knew I was going to be able to compete. The idea of being a star never crossed my mind.
The technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the 'physical book,' a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages.
Language... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.
Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
I'm terrified of being poor, I always have been. It's growing up as a Methodist. I'll spend that bit of extra money to get a better seat on a train sometimes, because it's quieter and calmer, but I refuse to spend money on clothes.
Wherever there is one job on the verge of being lost, I will fight to save it. Wherever there is one company looking to grow in West Virginia, I will fight to make that growth a reality.
I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.
Being in an area of the planet where scientists believe mankind started is quite amazing.
Each of the Arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a Muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.
My contribution I hope is to get people to eat full-flavored food. If I could come away with that alone, that would be a fantastic accomplishment. I'm also very proud of being a very American chef.
I liked the idea of being a writer and letting somebody else do the graft.
I absolutely loved improv! I felt very much at home being onstage. It freed me to be all sorts of people other than myself. It was an escape from myself, if you will. I still love that creative freedom of improv and making people laugh.
I've never been bashful to say that I'm not really interested in Formula One. When I lived in England, it's all I wanted to do and I thought that anything else would somehow be a compromise to my dreams. But then when I came back to the States, I realised how much I loved being back in the States.
In America, politicians do whatever to get re-elected, and a lot of decisions that were being made at that time by Kennedy were certain not to get him re-elected.
For me, being a starter doesn't matter. Of course, I'd like to be in at the end of the game, to be a big part of the team, and to play as many minutes as I can play. But starting and coming off the bench are two different challenges.
I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying.
I think that it's hard enough being an adolescent and wanting so much to fit in with your peers, your schoolmates, and to erase any sign of difference, to be part of the group. And being biracial but also being black in a predominately white school marked me as different.
