I'm definitely sensitive to the idea of exploitation. You don't want to glamorize certain things.
If you had told me in 1968 that 20 years later I'd still be receiving wonderful royalty checks for those three years, I wouldn't have believed you.
It became motivation as opposed to something else - the thing about poverty is that it starts affecting your mind and your spirit because people don't see you. I chose from a very young age that I didn't want that for my life. And it very much has helped me appreciate and value the things that are in my life now because I never had it.
If you go to a big publishing house, editorial aside, it's completely white.
To me, bravery is to stand up for what you believe in.
When you're working on a novel, you never think about how much it would cost to shoot one of your scenes. But that's a huge consideration in film and TV.
Great guitar players are a dime a dozen. It is sometimes your very limitations as players that set you apart from the crowd.
I have to tell you, TV is an incredibly difficult medium. The most challenging show to do is the hour long dramedy. It's a very tricky format.
Flying was great. You have to think fast. You have to develop intuition about the physics of air moving quickly over a surface.
'Notting Hill?' Does that poke fun at being British? Maybe it does. In 'Mickey Blue Eyes,' that's kind of the point: the clash of worlds, the unlikely combo of a respectable Englishman and a mob guy. If you take out the Britishness, you don't really have much.
I'm not one who can get by on six hours sleep night after night. You can see it on my face and hear it in my voice. When working 14-hour days, I have to go home, go to sleep, and wake up in time for crew call. I hate naps. They throw me off the rest of the day.
Producing is so exciting because you can enable things to happen, whether it's like discovering a filmmaker who you're taking a chance on, protecting a battle and driving home at the end of the day just going, 'I'm so glad I stayed late at work and fought hard for that. Had my passion. Won that battle.'
It's very easy to keep putting off having a family if you enjoy your job, but you just have to get on with life.
A profoundly disturbing thing you discover very quickly traveling in Cuba is that the most dangerous person for Cubans isn't the police or even the secret police; it's their neighbor. Anyone can report you for anything 'outside' the revolution - even if you haven't done it yet.
It's a farmers market. You can get whatever - peaches, a sandwich. There might be a little band there. I'd sit in with the band. Yeah, that's what I would do. Sit in with the band at the farmers market. Sing a couple of songs, eat a peach, and hug people.
Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.
I have always been interested in how you can walk into a room and there will be 40 people there and you are immediately drawn to one.
When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you're suffering in.
I think it's okay to feel jealous, but it's how you deal with it that's the important thing. You have to be happy for your friends when they do well because you want them to do well. It's not a competition.
I don't think you can set up a computer to do a strike zone on a guy who's 6-foot-5 and then a guy who's 5-8. Where does it draw the line? One guy stands tall, and another squats down, and it changes the lines. Nah. I still love the umpires; they do a great job. I don't have a problem with any of that.
I'm sorry, but chick fights are sexy. If you don't think so, you're either an uptight woman or a lying man.
It's one thing to hear that someone likes your show; it's a completely different thing to have them come take their time and film something with you on a sidewalk.
For centuries, building materials were free. You want to build a house, you cut down some trees. But we haven't been thinking about the cost to the planet.
Really, if you get to know pigs, they're very moody. They're not sweet little animals at all. That's what I like about them. They get depressed; they get into these snits. They're carnivorous.
As far as an actor-director connection, I think those can develop, and when they do, they're really great, and you just cultivate it like you would any relationship or friendship. If you find that something special, it helps down the line when you want to do more projects with each other.
When I was nine, my father said 'You can take piano lessons or do karate' - I had a black belt and was competing before I was 19.
I have another aspect of my career where I'm a scholar of Yiddish and Hebrew literature, and I'll say that when you study Yiddish literature, you know a whole lot about forgotten writers. Most of the books on my shelves were literally saved from the garbage. I am sort of very aware of what it means to be a forgotten artist in that sense.
Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.
There's still a lot of things you can legitimately do to make America safe through electronic surveillance.
If people are constantly reading about you, and you're overexposed, they've got no reason to go see your movies. Also, it's not pleasant or nice to have your privacy invaded.
Success? You can't get a big head about it. When people stare at me, they could be whispering to their friend, 'That guy sucks! Have you seen him before? He's horrible.'
I love performing, you know, because, like I say, I'm a ham for this stuff.
I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can't get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That's in friendship, that's a deal, that's a commitment. Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.
Laughter is the best medicine - unless you're diabetic, then insulin comes pretty high on the list.
Samsung and Apple seem to think that they're going to provide everything. Apple believes services will drive hardware, while Google wants to own each user regardless of hardware, so you have differing philosophies.
Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.
