Our school not only makes you an actor, it makes you understand who you actually are as well... it gives you discipline and punctuality. It also teaches you a way of life.
No matter how big you are, when you go back home, your family treats you like a normal person.
It's like I had two things pulling at me: you want to be a fighter, and you have problems. So I couldn't be a fighter, and I wasn't solving any problems.
I love being on set, because I've basically grown up on a set. And now I love to contribute as a director and help steer the ship, if you will.
From a person standpoint, the old expression of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is somewhat true.
I think that when you use the word 'plus-size,' you're putting all these women in a category: 'You don't eat well.' 'You don't work out.' 'You could care less about your body.' 'You're insecure.' 'You have no confidence.'
I have friends who are black, white, purple, gay, straight, Martian, yellow, old, and young. I have friends who are animals and a few who I believe to be robots. All of them are people to me. In my mind, it's not about what you look like or what you do; it's about who you are inside.
You know, I never fight for corporate America.
Look, a lot of directors were actors, even if they were unsuccessful actors which I think is helpful. I think it's a really helpful thing for a director to have experienced that. It helps you know how to talk to actors and how to get what you need from them.
When you start out, you have to make compromises, which include doing films of lower quality.
I fall asleep feeling beautiful. Then, in the morning, before I leave the house, I say five things I love about myself, like 'You have really pretty eyes.' That way I can go out into the world with that little bit of extra confidence. It's a feel-good protein shake in my back pocket in case someone messes with me that day.
As an actor, you need to use everything at your disposal.
I think always having somebody that you trust and you know can help in the communication, that is very important.
Unless you have bad times, you can't appreciate the good times.
If you know how many acres you have sown of each kind of corn, inquire how much the acre the soil of that land takes for sowing, and count the number of quarters of seed, and you shall know the return of seed, and what ought to be over.
You know, one of the great things about most renewable technologies - not every technology, but many of them - is the jobs have to be local. When you're talking about a power plant and power generation using solar thermal technology, the jobs will be where the plant is.
There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain - do something to make more money yourself.
I'm a big believer of work/life balance. You need a little down time to recharge to make sure that when you're here, you're really all here. I still have a child in high school, so I go to her sporting events, even if it means leaving work and working again when I get home. I probably should work out a little more than I do.
You can find out anything you want about a car now, and especially every bit of information about the price, without relying on the dealers.
It wasn't until I got out of the Army and I heard Coltrane's record 'Coltrane,' when he was doing 'Inch Worm' and 'Out of This World,' that I thought, 'Oh my God, you can do that?' And then I thought, 'OK, I better go back and listen to Eric Dolphy a bit.' And then I said, 'Hmm, I better pull out these Ornette Coleman records.'
I like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn't want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. 'Discreet Music' was like that, and 'Music for Airports.' What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.
I'm very much interested in having people take herbs that make them feel good because if they do that, they'll have an experience, and they'll say, 'Oh, this is real.' This is something you take, and you don't have to go on faith, but you can feel the difference.
I think that for every artist, it's very important to have an output and to feel very strongly about the music you're producing.
In any business, the more you learn, the more sympathetic you can be to other people's positions.
For British cinema to survive, you really need a British film culture, and it's got to start down there, with young kids watching films in the cinema - so they can be transported to a different world.
It's hard to get a film, you know, you need a very special film to be able to get that experimental. But, I would love to see that happen. I would love the opportunity to be more experimental than I am.
When you live in a condo complex with people next door, I don't know how you can be dead for four months without anybody noticing you not coming and going.
I never go into a scene - ever, ever, ever - thinking, I have to make myself more empathetic toward the audience. Once you start doing that, you get into really dangerous territory. I think you start to become kind of untrue to the character.
Whether or not you discover your talents and passions is partly a matter of opportunity. If you've never been sailing, or picked up an instrument, or tried to teach or to write fiction, how would you know if you had a talent for these things?
On YouTube you can tell what countries are watching and I've definitely noted a strong Australian following. You can plan your tours around where the love is on Twitter and YouTube - before, you couldn't tell.
Nobody likes, you know, the ugly parts of politics.
If you looked at the sound pattern of an old-fashioned record, it would be very spikey. But nowadays, there's no spikes - everything looks like a brick, so the quiet bits become louder. It's actually damaging because it's like listening to a drill.
You don't have to look any farther than the state of California to know that having a 'Gordian knot' of conflicting measures acting upon on your state budget is a recipe for disaster.
I had actually been going to Hawaii for quite a while before I ever picked up the uke. I think with anything new you're going to get more enjoyment out of it if it comes to you quickly, and the uke facilitates that.
With any sci-fi fantasy storytelling, you must have rules be very clear, otherwise you lose people, like 'OK, they can fly; now they can't fly.'
I feel like my experience on 'Community' was that I saw just how important that first year is for a series. That is where you work all the pieces out, and that means honing the characters' voices, setting that tone, finding your angle.
