I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.
With my music, I can express myself so much. A lot of the fans can sense that I'm relating to them something that's quite personal.
When you encounter seemingly good advice that contradicts other seemingly good advice, ignore them both.
I tend to be hypercritical of my performances. That's why I hate watching them with people I know.
They envy the distinction I have won; let them therefore, envy my toils, my honesty, and the methods by which I gained it.
For all your days be prepared, and meet them ever alike. When you are the anvil, bear - when you are the hammer, strike.
The hardest part is not to repeat yourself. I don't really believe my core obsessions are going to change, but you need to look for ways to express them that are different. The main reason for doing that is not to bore yourself, and obviously, I don't want to bore readers.
It's horrible when people are only interested in buying labels, because it doesn't bring them the happiness they think it will.
If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them. When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or Fight Like Hell.
It seems like they never say anything bad about actors, they just pump them up.
I am always so happy to be at 'SNL.' I still feel like a kid when I'm there, like I can't believe I'm watching them make the show.
Clothes should look as if a woman was born into them. It is a form of possession, this belonging to one another.
I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.
Sensation is amphibious: at the same time it joins us to and divides us from things. It is the door through which we enter into things but also through which we come out of them and realize that we are not things.
I avoided nudity unless a film couldn't be told without those scenes. If you look at my films, few of them have that element, yet nudity and male fantasies have become emblematic of my work.
I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.
Looking around, I saw so many unhappy adults, people who loathed their jobs, and I didn't want to be one of them.
It was Vikram Bhatt and 'Raaz' that got me interested in the medium of cinema. Before that, I was like any other youngster dabbling with various things - modelling, films - without a definite direction or focus. Now that I'm working with all of them, life has come full circle for me.
I would never say I think divorce is wrong. After seeing what my parents went through, I would never want them to stay together just because they think it's the right thing to do.
If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.
One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.
I wasn't the kind of person that liked waiting for autographs or following them, I just liked to go to the shows, study their records, driving many, many hours to different states to go to concerts.
Many people are taking 2D games and making them into 3D games by recreating the characters in polygons. But the gameplay's still the same, and that's not what they should be doing.
James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught - I didn't go to art school - so I thought when I started doing them, 'If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,' because his stuff is very raw.
Material goods consist of useful material things, and of all rights to hold, or use, or derive benefits from material things, or to receive them at a future time.
Kids under, I'd say, 14 are still maturing; they are still growing. They are still understanding themselves. To hit them with something like 'Roots,' to hit them with this particular period of time, it's important to discuss the matters beyond the program itself.
Summon me, then; I will be the posse comitatus; I will take them to jail.
I think that weddings have probably been crashed since the beginning of time. Cavemen crashed them. You go to meet girls. It makes sense.
No matter how committed a marriage, there will always be other people - those we have chemistry with and those we don't, those we are attracted to, and those who shop for functional outdoors wear. The sooner a couple can accept the existence of the former and exchange a few basic reassurances concerning them, the easier life gets.
In a true democracy is the cure for most of our social and political ills, but a few of them must remain to keep us going.
Don't assume your child is weak. If you, the parent, assume that they can't take anymore, what kind of signal are you sending them?
Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.
Individual investors have become far more powerful than anyone gives them credit for. Today, 85 million Americans invest in stocks. Collectively, that kind of buying and selling power can move markets.
All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
I think you should make more movies, more musicals. I think the public deserves that. I think this country deserves to be able to get out and foster that talent. Give them an opportunity to become stars. I think the whole idea is wonderful.
When I'm not acting, I'm writing, building an inventory of scripts. Even if they sit on the shelf, I just keep stacking them up.
