When you reach that elite level, 90 percent is mental and 10 percent is physical. You are competing against yourself. Not against the other athlete.
To be gay is nothing to be proud of. It's in how you are gay that you have something to be proud of, considering the obstacles placed in your path if you are gay.
You have to focus on the future and know that you can succeed in life, and you have to keep working hard.
If a hundred people want autographs, sometimes you have to say no because you've got to get up for a 4 A.M. flight or something. In that sense, it really pisses me off when people think you've become a diva. It's not becoming a diva, it's because of the situation, I think.
My problem is that the audience is more fiction-literate than ever. In Shakespeare's day, you probably expected to see a play once or twice in your life; today you experience four or five different kinds of fiction every day. So staying ahead of the audience is impossible.
I get good references from a wide range of music. Something who's been a good influence in the last few years is Qawwali music. If you listen to a Qawwali singer like Aziz Mian - he's like James Brown. Qawwali is like Pakistani gospel-jazz. It's emotional, but it's also improvised, and it's all about that sacred-and-profane tightrope.
Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.
I don't think you can say something is or isn't magic. That's what was cool about Houdini, because he was a magician who had a magic show, but he was also an escape artist, and they kind of, over time, blended together. They both kind of enhance each other, I think.
Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people's hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.
Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.
I was offered a free villa in Hollywood, but I said no thank you, I prefer to live in Italy.
You can never rely on musicians. I quit high school at one point to make a go of it with this band and we kept breaking up. So I went back to school.
At the structural level, when the primary is all that matters, the incentives change for politicians. And, when you can earn media coverage with bombast and vitriol, that creates another incentive for politicians to light things on fire.
Sometimes you're only human and you learn.
We go on and on about our differences. But, you know, our differences are less important than our similarities. People have a lot in common with one another, whether they see that or not.
It's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
It's a great way to start the day, hearing you've been nominated for an Emmy. It's just thrilling.
You've just got to focus on excellence and try not to be distracted by the news and the rumors and the absurdities of the stories that were coming out.
Bulgarians eat tarator every single day in summer. They think of it as salad although we'd call it a soup. You can make it as thick or thin as you like depending on how much water you add. It's very practical in summer because yogurt cools the body faster than water, but the water hydrates you.
You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.
Ice skating is very difficult. It takes a lot of discipline and a lot of hard work. It's fun, but you are there on the ice every morning freezing and trying to do these moves and these tricks.
When you know people are really at peace with who they are and what they do, they collaborate and want to help you to improve.
The allure of Hollywood is huge when you don't know anything. You don't know the knives behind the smiles.
There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.
You will never catch up with the spread of AIDS no matter how much money, no matter how many antiretrovirals are put into the system, unless you stop its growth. And the only way to stop its growth is prevention.
If you don't trust the pilot, don't go.
If you really believe in the message you're preaching, you want as many people as possible to listen.
Some folks run from the doubt and go backward. You try for all the spiritual Band-Aids you can find... when actually, what you need to do is press forward, to accept those doubts and work through them.
Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.
I admit I do have some drawbacks and limitations as a candidate. Although I am a professional comedian, some of my critics maintain that this is not enough. I cannot deny that I stand before you untested and inexperienced - I only spent two years in television, never as a romantic lead or a song and dance man.
It used to be you had real friends on the other side of the aisle. It's not like that anymore. Society has changed. The public is to blame as well. I think the people have gotten dumber.
As an athlete, you only have so much time. The window only has so much time and then it closes. You have to take care of yourself the best you can.
Sometimes you ask God for something and you don't know what you're asking.
The thing that Tea Parties have to understand, you can't govern if you don't get elected.
Sometimes, you just get a label and it sticks.
