Many creative people are finding that creativity doesn't grow in abundance, it grows from scarcity - the more Lego bricks you have doesn't mean you're going to be more creative; you can be very creative with very few Lego bricks.
All my music is inspirational. You just gotta listen to the words and get what you can get out of it.
Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
A creative project is a moving target. You never end up where you start.
One thing I always really enjoyed about Quincy Jones' production technique was that there were so many layers to every song. Like, one week you'd hear a new trumpet-line, then the next week you'd hear - be hearing a new guitar-line.
You don't have to be an angel, just be someone who can give.
I'm the only girl songwriter that fights for a lot of things. I fight for songwriting fees, which record labels want you to shut up about.
I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.
Honestly, racism is something learned, not something that you just pick up one day and wish to dislike someone.
As an actor, you're naked emotionally; you're revealing yourself emotionally.
You don't need to be a spook to care about encryption. If you travel with your computer or keep it in a place where other people can put their hands on it, you're vulnerable.
Everyone has a really short attention span, and you have to bombard them with content, content, content.
Every so often, you want to map out your plot mythology but never so specifically that you can't let a story surprise you. You want to allow the type of action of the writer's room so that you have the ability to take a left turn.
If you watch young children play, you will notice that they create games, characters, situations, whole worlds in which they immerse themselves with intense concentration.
I feel like every first episode of a TV show is bad, you know, and it always improves.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I really believe that.
You can wear anything as long as you put a nice pair of shoes with it.
One day I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere by blaming other people for my circumstances. I finally understood: Even if you feel someone has wronged you or owes you something, no one is going to give you anything for free.
I sort of look at some peers of mine and I think, 'No, you've got it all wrong!' I just want to tell them all to have babies and be happy and not get sucked into that Hollywood thing.
What I love about doing live theater and the same material night after night is... you can live inside the same words. There comes a great joy in that, in making it so clear because you've had the time to define it.
Visit a typical science classroom and you will discover far more than empirical facts being taught. The dominant worldview among scientific intellectuals is evolutionary naturalism, which holds that humans are essentially biochemical machines.
God's people are peculiar. Their spirit cannot mingle with the spirit and influence of the world. You do not wish to bear the Christian name and yet be unworthy of it.
You go through life in a series of peaks and valleys.
There's always a host of voices you're inspired by. I love Don DeLillo, and I love Isaac Bashevis Singer, and I love Beckett, and I love Pinter. He's one of the funniest voices in English literature since Dickens.
Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it.
When you write, you put your thoughts in the public space. You get both positive and negative feedback.
If you're so committed to liberty that you see the Soviet Union as a threat, you're a Republican. If you're kind of indifferent to freedom and the level of the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union is just a question of extent and not really threatening to anybody, then you're a Democrat.
There should be a path to earned legal status for those that are here. Not - not amnesty - earned legal status, which means you pay a fine and do many things over an extended period of time.
What you learn in any acting class is how to make a fool of yourself and enjoy things and get out of your head.
It's in the difficult times that we're growing and you can't just rebuke everything hard. We've got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.
People look at me, and they go, 'You're white, you're smart, you must have went to college. You must have grown up with money.'
It's not like the old competition that you had between Leno and Letterman. It's a friendly competition between Fallon and Stephen.
You must always have great, secret, big fat hopes for yourself in love and in life. The bigger, the better.
I am a firm believer that the only person who can make you feel inferior is yourself.
If you don't take a risk, you will not be satisfied and happy. I think one must look at creating history.
