If I were talking to someone, I'd look at their eyes, not at the blemish on the side of their face. But as soon as you open up that photo on a 30-inch monitor, you'd say, 'Oh my gosh, where did that come from?'
I came back to New York after college like any number of struggling performers, and you just find that niche where you can have some sort of impact. And for me that turned out to be comedy.
If you have other gods before the Lord, your heart will be turned away from serving the only true and living God, who requires the whole heart, the undivided affections. All the heart, all the soul, all the mind, and all the strength, does God require. He will accept of nothing short of this.
Being a good leader requires remembering that you're there for a reason, and the reason certainly isn't to have your way. High-integrity leaders not only welcome questioning and criticism - they insist on it.
One of the things I thought a lot about was how can we get the views, for instance, the main plaza, you look up to Telegraph Hill from there and therefore it would be a disaster to close that view off.
Get yourself into every audition that you can. Even in those for smaller roles, you'll never know when someone may recommend you for a bigger one.
It's said that you can tell a lot about someone by who opposes them. In the case of liberal pundit Bill Maher - a man who called America's actions cowardly in the wake of 9/11 and who mocked WWII veterans who wanted to visit the monument built in their honor - I wear his disapproval of me as a badge of honor.
For a coach to be able to help you, they need to get to know you well. They need to see what's happening - that you are not in the mood to talk, or something like this. It is very hard to find the right person.
Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn't be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say.
When you are seeing somebody, then obviously it's a commitment. And if you don't want to commit, then don't be in a relationship. Every relationship deserves a certain credibility and respectability. For me, it's always been like that.
When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express.
Sometimes people ask me, 'You do stand-up?' I try explaining what I do, and I don't think they really get it. So: 'Yeah, I do stand-up.' I wish there was one word to express what I do - that way, I don't sound arrogant. Whenever I say I'm a performer, people think I'm a performance artist: 'She paints herself white and pretends to be a flower.'
TNT is a really great company to do a show for. They really believe in their shows and give shows a lot of support. They have it all worked out before you start shooting. Everybody's on the same page.
I've turned down jobs because I've said, 'Honestly, I can't find my way in. I can't do it. I love you, as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do.'
I had best friends who were in the industry, and I'm like, it's cool if you get a job, and I'm happy.
You do get very tired sometimes, when you're sitting around for hours in movies. You get depleted.
I think if you are young and you have children, you still have so much to prove. When you have children later in life, you lose a bit of that urge for working.
I have been known to buy e-versions of my books because I was in a hotel room and I needed one right away to look up something in it; very handy for that - you can have it just the next minute; you can press the button and just have it.
I live a sensible life. You know, I don't take on too much.
I don't understand why people in this country are so bent on doing the 'perfect', when you have something that is good and makes sense from a cost-benefit point of view.
One thing I loved when I was growing up, you maybe saw one review from a magazine like 'Rolling Stone,' but now there are 150 reviews before an album even comes out. There are so many opinions out there, but the only one that really matters is your own.
Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.
You don't have to worry about Donald Trump stabbing you in the back; he'll stab you right in the heart, but he says what he says, and he stands by it.
Rock will never be dead for me. Do I like a lot of what I hear on rock music radio? No, not for the most part. I'm not a fan of the regurgitated Pearl Jam and Nickelback crap that's the biggest thing in the Midwest. There isn't that big of a market for rock anymore. Every once in a while something happens and you like it.
My biggest influence is rap. It spoke to me, probably because of my upbringing in Christiania. You listen to 'The Chronic' and you can hear that anger and frustration.
Limitations are something that I latch onto - like working in genre, or if you're writing TV, there are act breaks, there's a length of time it's supposed to be. The restrictions of budget and sets can be really useful. When you can have everything, it's very hard to make things feel real and lived in.
I just want to encourage you all... to rethink the resettlement of refugees in this country, especially in the numbers I'm hearing.
I learned at a very early age, the easiest thing in the world is to tell the truth, and then you don't have to remember what you said. It has nothing to do with morality, just remembering what you said.
My whole M.O. in my 20s was being in as many different types of films as you can. Working with as many different types of directors as you can. I think, in part, that's what I wanted to do as an actor.
If you look at all the serious scientists in the world, there is no big disagreement on the basics of this... it would be absolute lunacy to act as if climate change is not occurring.
The real issue for the public is to figure out which narrative do we want. We can have a bigger government, if that's the public's choice. It'll just require higher taxes on every American. Do you want that, or do you want smaller government, smaller taxes?
I've been talking to certain wrestlers on the phone lately, and certain female wrestlers that were huge stars ten years ago, and the first thing I ask them is 'do you still want to work?' Do they want to talk, or do they want to wrestle or do something else in the business?
You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
If you get the product and technology right, then the rest usually falls into place.
Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are.
When you realize who you live for, and who's important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I'm gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it - and I lived it for me.
