I felt pretty good growing up. I didn't feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.
When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you're defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.
There was a big horror boom in the '80s, and I liked its originality and what you could get away with.
The money I earn from films means I can help the people I want to help - you can do a lot of good if you want to.
As you know, God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small.
At Mardi Gras, the different tribes will basically play war games, and so my brother is what you call a Flag Boy, which is more of less like a tribe's diplomat. He carries the game's standard and is really the line of where the game starts.
If you say the word amnesty - the 'A-word,' so to speak - it's DOA. If there's even a hint of amnesty in my district, it's dead on arrival.
In fighting, you're not going 200 mph, but there's obviously danger in the sport. If you're a fighter or a NASCAR driver, you're obviously an adrenaline junkie. Both also take a lot of skill.
You get one life. I'm going to embrace mine.
People always think you have a lot of money when they see you on TV.
I think naturally, if you're an actor, there's a high level of assertiveness that you need to have to survive this business. There's boldness in being assertive, and there's strength and confidence.
I don't think it's the writer's job to give answers or to give opinions. In fact, when a writer has answers, I think the work ends up being corrupted. It becomes didactic. What a book does is share a consciousness and invite people to explore the questions as best as you can.
Nowadays I'm more interested in what you'd call 'alternative.' Lately we've been listening to a lot of Mumford & Sons, and Jenny Owen Youngs. I'm also pretty crazy about the Kings of Convenience, a Norwegian band that's been compared to Simon and Garfunkel.
When I hear the word 'documentary,' I don't think certain things should be left out. You've got to keep it 100 percent as much as you can, unless your group has a meeting beforehand and says, 'Yo - don't say this, 'cause boom, boom, boom.' Other than that, it's a documentary so let's document, you know what I mean?
I want people to understand my journey and to be inspired by that. You can be an immigrant, and if you work really hard, you can have your own restaurant.
I was tired of everyone saying that when you write about race in America, it has to be nuanced, it has to be subtle, it has to be this and that.
In the luxury business, you have to build on heritage.
In Reykjavik, Iceland, where I was born, you are in the middle of nature surrounded by mountains and ocean. But you are still in a capital in Europe. So I have never understood why I have to choose between nature or urban.
Failure is enriching. It's also important to accept that you'll make mistakes - it's how you build your expertise. The trick is to learn a positive lesson from all of life's negative moments.
Coming out of Dallas and doing commercial work in Dallas - if you had improv background in Dallas, then you were instantly shot to the top of the list of commercial bookings because they loved improvisers because you could elevate the material.
I tell all my younger friends, 'Don't be afraid of change. That is when you truly see what your destiny is.'
People seem to think of me as a goody-goody who never curses, but I can be very nasty if I'm pushed. Cross me too many times, and I'll never talk to you again.
When you're young and you have money, you become the CEO, automatically, of life, of your family.
You want to be doing your best work whatever field of the arts you're in because your life's going to be over all too soon, and you have to make the most of it.
On more than one occasion, the camera has cut to me after a break as I'm still trying to swallow the last bite of cookie. Those of you who have thought to yourselves, 'That guy talks like he has marbles in his mouth,' should know that they are not marbles, but oatmeal cookies.
When we heard that little dial-up sound, that eeeeee, and then you connected, and you then go and you check your mail and you get that 'you got mail,' you were excited. I mean, that was the thing.
But if an actress asks me my opinion, I would tell her there are a million different designers who make faux fur. If you like that look, wear faux fur. If you're doing it on the red carpet, you're doing it for how it looks. Faux fur and real fur look the same on camera.
Acting is exciting. It is different every time you do it.
I honestly think that in five years time, television will be watched on computer screens anyway and you'll be doing multiple things. You'll be 'IMing' while you're watching a show and checking the news.
So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.
When you put a poem on a Kindle, the lines are broken in order to fit on the screen. And so instead of being the poet's decision, it becomes the device's decision.
I have to believe that most people know that 'Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You' is my song. But the reaction we get from the audience at 'Jersey Boys' is that they didn't remember how many hits we had. A lot of 'Oh yeah, I forgot they did that song.' We had 20 Top 10 hits in the U.S... people forget.
I was short until my senior year. It's just, like, your social status is so dependent on how quickly you hit puberty, basically.
Seniors vote, and that is why we have, you know, Medicare since the 1960s for seniors, and we didn't have a national healthcare program for children, even though it's a lot more cost-effective to deal with children than with seniors.
I'm not the type of guy to go so deep with the concept songs, but there's deep thought in everything. Maybe it's not just a repetitive hook telling you what the song is about - you have to use your brain a little bit.
I would be on the 'anti-reality' show. I can't stand reality TV. I can tell you one that I absolutely would not be on, and that's 'Dancing With the Stars.' If you ever see me on that show, just please understand my family is starving to death, and things are really bad in the Church household.
