It's so strange how people can be judgmental when they see a pregnant woman dressed in high heels and tight dresses. Being pregnant shouldn't make you feel less of a woman, but more of a woman!
It doesn't take much for anyone to pick up anything I play - it's quite simple. I go for a good song. And if you hear a good song, you don't dissect it - you just listen, and every bit seems right.
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.
I appreciate the few people who say nice things about me and say, 'Gee, you were right about this,' or, 'You were right about that.' But frankly, I spend my time looking ahead. I've got 23 grandkids, and I'm concerned about what their world is going to be like.
I want you to realize your voice matters.
The key about playing internationally is the confidence that you gain. Not only do you train with some of the best players in the NBA, but you compete against some of the best players in the world.
I ruffle a lot of feathers. And I'm also selective - that makes you a troublemaker. But so be it. I laid a cornerstone for black actors, and that makes me happy.
I'm one of those people you can tell 'no' a million different ways, and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to figure out some way to get you to say 'yes.' People have always underestimated me. I have great stamina, great tenacity.
The Gandhi family has a tradition of being good hosts. When you call upon them, they treat you with a lot of respect.
I grew up in such a melting pot. There's more ethnicities in Queens than there is in any place on the planet. So you grow up knowing things about other cultures.
When you see a fly flitting around your hair or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance. But in my lab, you really see a marvelous machine: arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet.
I'm not technical. When I listen to music, I gravitate more toward the sonic aspect of it. The technical stuff of it, I get bored with it. These long solos? OK, already. You know your scales, big deal. I know it, too, but I don't want to do that.
Moderating a debate means spending more time with briefing books than with your children. It means writing and rewriting and rephrasing. It means finding a way to be alert enough to notice when your question goes unanswered and nimble enough to decide what you will do about that on the spot.
Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes.
The reality is that most companies are not about any values at all - they are about making money. It is extremely rare for a business to stand for anything because most businesses don't want to alienate potential customers, and if you believe in anything you are going to alienate someone.
You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what's around you. You go crazy that way.
I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.
It's really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he's the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don't like it.
Effective listening is something that can absolutely be learned and mastered. Even if you find attentive listening difficult and, in certain situations, boring or unpleasant, that doesn't mean you can't do it. You just have to know what to work on.
I feel like I've got the best job in the world. I just feel so fortunate to get paid to be a kid and play with my friends. So if it's rough or a little bit hot, you just have to deal with that.
I listen to the people. That was a big reason for my life, maybe the main reason, I'm singing because I love it when people say to me, 'Thank you.' I thank them. It's a marriage.
Obama is not an African American president, but a president of all Americans. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, Hispanic, he's the president of all races.
As an older dad you can certainly get down on the floor. The problem is can you get up again?
I think there's a point at which you know how you dress isn't going to affect how much you do in life.
I think if you make a good movie, people walk away arguing.
It is important to realize that the process of 'fostering' a passion takes trial and error. It takes experience; you cannot do it all in your head. And it takes a long time.
The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.
The hip hop industry is most likely owned by gays. I happen to think there's a gay mafia in hip hop. Not rappers - the editorial presidents of magazines, the PDs at radio stations, the people who give you awards at award shows.
Certainly what happened to the dinosaurs was not good - that was a terrible day for the dinosaurs, very sad. But I have to say, there are a lot of threats we face as people and, as someone who lives in Los Angeles, I'm personally more likely to die from driving on the freeway than I am from an asteroid, so you have to put that risk in perspective.
I have a growing resume, but it's because I'm very selective. There are a lot of actors in my position that are like me: they have an opportunity to make a lot of money early in their career, and they do that, and after that, there's nothing to sustain that. There's no art or interest in your craft from the people that want to see you.
I had an audition for Mary Jane Watson in 'Spiderman' and ended up playing Betty Brant in that series. I auditioned for Amy Adams' role in 'Catch Me If You Can' and, you know, ended up playing the bank teller. So there were a lot of times early on where I felt like I was always sort of the bridesmaid, never the bride - never quite right.
Come on, we're teenagers. Everything that comes out of our mouth is something that's off. You never say something that's perfect.
Pregnancy isn't 'I can eat whatever I want,' because you have to remember you're going to be stuck with a lot of that weight afterwards that you need to try to get off.
I have friends who are scientists, strict materialists, who don't think science and religion are compatible, but I just think most of us - unless you're a strict atheist materialist, which there aren't many of - most of us believe in something outside the material world. And if you do believe that, I don't know how you're not obsessed with it.
The things you're passionate about and interested in, get experience with them by going deep on projects. I would encourage science projects, plays. Pursue science, math, writing, history - the 21st century demands a lot of cross-disciplinary thinking.
'The Replacements' is where I met Jon Favreau, and we just clicked like, you know, like kids at a camp. And he wrote my next movie, which was 'Made.'
