You want to sell records, but if you want to call yourself an artist, your job is how you express yourself.
I'm not scared of many things in front of the camera. Everywhere else, yes, I'm terrified. But acting is just pretending, and you are exploring feelings in a safe environment.
When you're in between the white lines, the game face is on. I was only focused on the task at hand - out, safe, ball, strike - leaving little time to think about how special a player, moment or game happened to be.
You can't do anything to a film post its release. I concentrate on working hard, giving the required inputs for the roles, having discussions with my directors and co-stars. It isn't possible to predict the fate of any film. I don't take failures to heart and successes to my head. These are part and parcel of this career.
You can easily justify to anyone about the need to keep supporting Israel. We get very generous support. We need it.
There's a certain freedom that comes when people don't expect you to be sexy.
Let me put it this way: If you're sitting in a movie and you're watching me, and you say, 'Isn't that Michael Caine a wonderful actor?' then I've failed.
People don't step outside themselves and make the film they want to make, because they're afraid of the reaction. But once you get that reaction and have lived through it, there's nothing they can do to get you down.
My feeling is, if you're going to be called a celebrity, you might as well use it for some good. It's better to testify for school lunches in front of Congress than get drunk in a bar somewhere and misbehave.
You can get an idea of human nature only when you can see the relationship of the individual human being to the whole cosmos.
You get money out of acting. You get gray hair out of directing. Actually, I get more of a rush from directing.
It's kind of weird. You can have hits, but it's hard to sustain a career. I went through that period where I didn't have a lot of hits, although people were still buying the records.
You cannot compare your athletic achievement to the importance of children and giving them a safe environment in which to grow up and enjoy life.
Once you have a product that you are happy with, you the need to centralize things to continue growth.
I watch a movie or a T.V. show or whatever; if it's good, I like to watch it more than once, and it's always fun to catch something you didn't see initially.
As an actor, when you're winning the moment over, there's a truth to your intention. You might laugh at it or you might cry at it, but I think your visceral reaction to it is a reaction to the truth of the moment.
There's a certain weird something. I'm always nervous when I spar. You learn it's going to hurt, but it's only going to hurt for a little bit. It brings out the animal in you to an extent. You learn what you can take.
There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet. But the thing you must try to write, when you do so, is a real sonnet, and not a practice sonnet.
Brooklyn for twenty years, I've learned that there is always someone better than you at what you do.
You never want to rest on your laurels. You want to keep doing things that terrify you.
Ocean rowing is very much what you make it. Rowing technique is pretty irrelevant on the ocean. It's the psychology that's important.
One of my main problems with music is that the basic formula is always the same: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, chorus, chorus, end. One of the bands that changed that was The Beatles. If you listen to 'Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.' It's three verses, bridge, end.
Good entrepreneurs are community builders, actively involved with their communities and dedicated to the community's well being. If you're dedicated to your community, it will be dedicated to you.
I'm not practising, I don't go to church, but what I got from it was a sense of belonging to something bigger. What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren't the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you're different.
There's nothing wrong with giving yourself a pat on the back. If you can't do that, you can't be objective about your work. You can't be conceited or cocky either, but you can't be too modest either.
You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.
I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.
When you're a kid growing up, you say you want to make it to the Major Leagues, and when you reach that dream, that's what it's all about.
At the end of the day, you can only fight from yourself. It is only you out there on that mat - but it sure helps knowing you have a great team of supporters cheering for you!
There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word in a familiar context. If you translated something into French and then had it translated back into English by somebody who didn't know the original, you'd lose what was funny.
Someone asked me recently if marriage is 50-50 - it averages out to be 50-50, but sometimes it's 75-25, sometimes it's 90-10. In the end, it has to average out to be 50-50; that's how you support each other.
In my other books, things do happen, but they are kind of bookends to the real action, which for me was an exploration of consciousness. Not that I don't get into the consciousness of the people in 'The Surrendered,' but you could say there's not as much anxiety about it.
Priority is placed on the chastity of women. You can be corrupt, or a murderer and still hold your head up high on the street without problems, whereas if there are any suspicions of your chastity and moral behaviour as a woman, you get lynched.
The American dream is you come here, you believe in democracy, you believe in the Constitution, you work hard, you can make it.
When you're going off to prison for the rest of your life, a lot of people do feel the need to explain themselves to all the people they have known.
I think we manifest the very thing we put out. If you're putting out negativity, then you're going to retrieve that same sentiment. If you emanate joy, it comes back to you.
