My first job was working for my dad. He was a used-car dealer, and I used to wash the cars down, clean them out, and so on. I would do stuff for him pretty much every day. It was quite a good job, to be honest.
I went to work in an office and learned, among other lessons, to do things I did not care for, and to do them well. Before I left this office, two of my books had already been published.
With 'Scratch,' our goal is to allow people to mix together all kinds of media, not just sounds, in creative ways. We want people to start from existing materials - grabbing an image, grabbing some sound, maybe even bits of someone else's program, and then extending them and mixing them to make them their own.
A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption.
Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.
Judges don't age; time decorates them.
When I sing, I don't want them to see that my face is black. I don't want them to see that my face is white. I want them to see my soul. And that is colorless.
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
Charm them with your presence as soon as they look at you.
I even got letters form kids in hospitals saying the music is what keeps them going, and that really touched my heart.
When I lived in Chicago, it often felt like the same people who were going to all the little theater companies were the people who were working in them.
Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.
Answer violence with violence. If one of us falls today, five of them must fall tomorrow.
My goal is to get people to really believe that the impossible is real, and not that I'm responsible for it. I want them to believe that they're having the most unusual, magical and bizarre days of their lives.
We are under no delusions as to the innate goodness even of very small children. They are bad a great deal of the time, but before it has been knocked out of them, they see no limit to the potentialities of the human will. Theirs is the faith to move mountains, because they do not yet know the fearful heft of them.
Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.
When I worked in theater, I was always writing things on Post-it Notes and sticking them on screens or desks. Twitter has given me a way of continuing to post those notes, only a lot of other people see them, too.
The only thing an actor owes his public is not to bore them.
Microsoft was not a mysterious, strange entity. You put your PC on and there's an ad for them.
Seve Ballesteros was the best trouble-shot player who ever lived. It didn't matter how far in the woods you put that guy, he'd find a way to get out. But Seve inadvertently put a lot of big numbers on the scorecards of average players, because he inspired them to take dumb chances.
You don't play villains like they are villains. You play them like you know exactly where they are coming from. Which hopefully you do.
We need to take lessons learned from fighting terrorism and apply them to cyber crime.
Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.
I try to frighten my very young colleagues into studying and understanding their voices before they attempt things that are beyond them. It's wise to take gymnastics and swimming to strengthen the body, because people don't realise what an athletic undertaking singing actually is.
I'm disregarding all the rules I've seen as people approach writing music. I'm trying to break them.
Relationships are so much a rerun of our parental relationships. We're rerunning the relationship they were in together and we're rerunning the relationship we had with them with our lover.
Privately, I believe in none of them. Neither do you. Publicly, I believe in them all.
If certain songs become popular enough to the point where I'll be playing them the rest of my life, I don't want them all to dwell on the same down moment that I'll have to keep reliving.
My family has reduced the effect of my career on my self-esteem. When I'm with them, they make me feel special regardless of how I play.
Music shouldn't be based around money or politics. Music should be a bunch of people that really do great songs together doing them together for the pursuit of having a good time.
With Whitney she has such a unique sound and powerful instrument that she made those songs her own. She might as well have written them because she brought such a power and passion to them that were very unique. She has a great gift.
If I could set a world record, it would be that I have 150 business partners, all with thriving businesses of their own that started with nothing and I made the difference to make them all billionaires.
A lot of brands, you can't touch them. When you're dealing with Snoop Dogg, he brings you closer to the brand and it feels like it's a part of you.
Don't let what others think or say get in your way; their actions reflect on them, not you.
It's often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people.
