'Nothin' on You' changed my life: I finally feel that I reached the point where I wanna be at. At times I questioned whether it was worth the sacrifice, but now I see it was.
When you can't follow a ballet's action, you can always read the program notes.
Always be different; don't follow the rules. Don't do what anyone tells you. Don't use the same sounds as people; don't use the same drums as people.
If you want to keep the relationships you have, it's best not to talk about them.
It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle. Hope is desire, feeling, and investing in a projection of something that doesn't yet exist. At its best, you witness its alchemy in your life, turning something that was once in the mind into reality. At its worst, it's delusion.
I think you can get away with being a bit more political in science fiction.
A word on 'Kingdom of Heaven:' if you get the four-disc set, which is 3 hr. 8 min., you'll see why it's such a good movie. It was a real passion project, and it's the film I'm most proud of. I think it was treated incredibly unfairly.
I've performed in China, France, New Delhi, and Indianapolis, and everybody just allows themselves to go at it and have a good time. I think that's what I'm doing through music. It's not about 'I'm from here and you're from there.' It's about unity.
I want every kid to go to college and be like a normal student. I want them to be able to go to a movie, go to a concert. I want them to be able to have that opportunity. But if you're paying kids, are you going to pay a lineman less than you're paying a quarterback? I don't know how to explain that stuff.
You need to get outside of your comfort zone to write songs that are interesting, songs that are compelling, songs that are different from what other people are writing.
For me, personally, skiing holds everything. I used to race cars, but skiing is a step beyond that. It removes the machinery and puts you one step closer to the elements. And it's a complete physical expression of freedom.
Everyone thinks they can cure stress by adding to their schedule, like going to yoga. Oh, great - one more thing to feel guilty about when you can't do it.
I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone it's going to be recorded and it goes to the government. I think the public can understand that.
When I was writing 'You Suck,' in 2006, I constructed the diction of the book's narrator, perky Goth girl Abby Normal, from what I read on Goth blog sites.
You do get a chance to think about things when you're at home, but that is when you want to relax and forget about football for a bit. Honestly, you don't really get time to stop and think about things. We have a job to do. That is all we concentrate on, going game by game.
Horseracing already has the highest mortality rate of any sport in the world per capita to the people who do it. If you crash in Nascar you still have a roll bar, and a cage, and a lot of protection. It's built to crash, but if you fall off a racehorse we all know what can happen, so it's tremendously dangerous.
I have found, writing a blog, that being non-opaque is necessary. You pretty much have to say what you know in much more firm terms or risk that the legions who always know more than you do will tell the story better.
You're in a situation where you have limited education opportunities, you don't have any money, you can't get a job; what are you going to do? You're going to go back to this criminal network that you actually made while you were in prison.
You've got something really angsty for me to play? Bring it on. Most of the time, I'm goofing around and doing impressions of people, so that's nice.
If you know what you're talking about, or if you feel that you do, the reader will believe you.
When you put all your eggs in one basket, you've got a problem.
If you're a director, your entire livelihood and your entire creativity is based on your self-confidence. Sometimes that's dangerously close to arrogance.
Hip-hop is one of the most free art forms there is. There's so many sounds you can use, so many things you can bring in. You never know, man. I bet years ago people would've never said they would hear me with Rick Ross, and we did four classic songs together.
You don't need someone destroying you when your own people are the worst messengers possible. And this is what black people in America have not come to grips with.
Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty. It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong.
You have to stay on top and learn from mistakes.
Love your friends' kids, even if you don't want or like children. Just do it.
It was not hard for me to find guidance and motivation. I'm very blessed, and my parents were always so supportive of myself and my brother. Whatever you wanted to do, you just had to give 110 percent. So whatever that was, they supported it.
Your employees have lots of opinions about everything - your strategy and vision; the state of the competition; the quality of your products; the vibe in the workplace. There are tons of things you can learn from them.
Sometimes the nature of a big movie, the nature of the material, the scene doesn't have the richness that you'd want it to.
Create something, sell it, make it better, sell it some more and then create something that obsoletes what you used to make.
What I had heard about TV is that it's very rigid - that you have to hit your mark, look a certain way, do certain things, that there is no freedom artistically - and that's my worst nightmare. I don't work well in rigid environments.
I just don't believe that being conservative means all you do is throw stones and poke people in the eye.
You can get a bit world-weary in this job, and 'The Passion' reminded me of what a fantastic job acting is and how lucky I am to be doing it.
As long as you're in an environment where the worth of the project isn't based on the project but what its predecessors did, it's not truly inclusive.
You can't hate Britney Spears because, you know what, no matter what Britney Spears been doing, she's still on TV.
