In the mental calmness of a spiritual life, I have found that the answers to the whys in our lives are able to come to you. In my music I find the same thing.
When something that occupies a giant space in your life comes to an end, then you have to go through a mourning period. I loved 'The Shield.' It was one of the hardest and one of the greatest experiences of my life. But having said that, I'm always thinking about what's next.
Let the master praise him, and say, 'Here ye do well.' For, I assure you, there is no such whetstone to sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.
Have you seen the roses? There's a whole lot of colours.
I don't have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don't know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don't know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don't think you need all that stuff.
When you get people standing up saying, 'I'm going to just tell the truth; what do we have to fear?,' it encourages others, and it creates a counterresponse.
You gotta have good olive oil. You should have a cooking olive oil and you should have a finishing olive oil, like an extra-virgin olive oil.
I spent most of the '60s, when I was starting to try to write novels, living and working in Greece and Turkey. These are countries where the ancient past is interfused with the daily present, and I remember being struck with wonder at the constant sense of continuity and connection, the reminders that lie in wait for you at every turn.
Analyzing what you haven't got as well as what you have is a necessary ingredient of a career.
We probably haven't seen the variety and diversity of threats to Americans' safety and well-being and our national security in a long, long time. Some have said it almost makes you yearn for the Cold War days when you knew who the bad guys were and who the good guys were, and there was a wall dividing us.
I've watched a lot of guys through the years, and they hold their breath until they finally win The Big One, thinking then they can exhale and chill out. You have to breathe through life, man. Have fun.
The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.
You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award.
There's got to be structure and great comedy. When you start with that, everything else falls into place.
When I joined Granada - which, you don't want to start crying about these things, but Granada was a very, very hot place to be, it was my good fortune to be there at that time - the BBC was firmly asleep.
You may think the president is all-powerful, but he is not. He needs a lot of guidance from the Lord.
Many of the things that we take for granted around the table, like cashing a check or just paying a bill or sending money to somebody you love, is very time consuming.
I'm not a money manager, but I can tell you what the conventional wisdom is. The younger you are, the more risk you can take on.
She still talks to me now, only now she talks to me in my dreams. And I can't wait to go to sleep tonight because we have a lot to talk about. I love you.
A tree grows. If you're staying the same, something is wrong. You're not alive.
Culture, what you believe, what you value, how you live matters. Now, as fundamental as these principles are, they may become topics of democratic debates from time to time, so it is today with the enduring institution of marriage. Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.
When everyone around you is doing all this incredible pirate acting and you're having to sort of play the straight guy and move the story forward, you kind of want to be doing some of that pirate ripping it up stuff, but in truth, to be a part of that project is what I love.
You lose your anonymity just like a helium balloon with a string. Therefore people are going to have their own opinion and they're going to write in whatever clever manner they desire.
You can't find any true closeness in Hollywood, because everybody does the fake closeness so well.
I understand the importance of mentorship for young people, even outside their parents. That's more important now than ever. You gotta have that support system everywhere you can.
Bora Bora is peaceful and quiet, but fun, so full of cool activities and more; spiritual to the core, and you leave with fully recharged batteries.
You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny, and all the things that a person could be. If you can achieve that, you feel great. You so rarely get to do that as an actress in general, but as a black actress, it's almost never.
When you've seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.
The point is that you want to have a system that is responsive.
For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.
I always think of albums as the format. I think it's perfect. I don't think you can tamper with that. It's not just sound, the analog, which is so much richer. It's the format. You're constrained by just 45 minutes, and it's perfect to me. I don't want to listen to any more than, and I live and breathe music.
I'm an absolute connoisseur of cheeseburgers and like to think that I can detect even mere percentages of shift in fat content in ground meat in a burger and can actually name the temperature to which it was actually cooked to the degree if I'm, you know, really on my game.
I've been fortunate enough to write a book and travel the country to sign and sell it, so I can safely say that a five-second burst of conversation while you're scribbling your name, over and over, is not the most reliable way to bond with Americans.
Producing a series is like being Lewis and Clark: You know where you're going, you just don't know how you're going to get there. When people say, 'You should create a bible for your show,' I say, 'You don't want a bible. It'll prevent you from making discoveries along the way.' And that's what happened on 'The X-Files.'
Have you ever talked to someone, and you're not even really talking to them? Actors are the worst for that.
It is a good thing to follow the First Law of Holes: if you are in one, stop digging.
