It's so difficult to actually come up with ideas that you really fall in love with, you know? That's the most difficult thing about filmmaking - and that's my main challenge in life.
In a spiritual sense, a positive attitude may help you get through chemotherapy and surgery and radiation and what have you. But a positive mental attitude does not cure cancer - any more than a negative mental attitude causes cancer.
For young boys, just to know you exist in any capacity is a strong feeling.
Sometimes kids ask how I've been able to write so many books. The answer is simple: one word at a time. Which is another good lesson, I think. You don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to know how every story is going to end. You just have to take that next step, look for that next idea, write that next word.
Animated films are so precisely engineered - right down to forming lines of dialogue with words pulled from several different takes - how do you translate that spontaneity from the live-action to the digital realm?
Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
When you win a world title, you are motivated to work.
God gives different people different gifts, and there are some people that can listen to an instrument and within a fraction of a second tell, you know, where it's off key or what note doesn't resonate correctly.
If you have a pre-conceived idea of the world, you edit information. When it leads you down a certain road, you don't challenge your own beliefs.
Originalism says that when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning.
I've never felt the breath of God - you can take that statement literally or metaphorically - more than when I was yearning for a personal, intimate connection to something bigger than me.
You make knowledge relevant to life and you make it important for children to learn things that will really relate to things going on in their lives, and not abstract.
I think movies have much more magic than the theater. Theater can be a magical experience, but movies thrust their subjectivity on you in a more profound way.
I eat before I feel hungry. I know that when you order food or shop on an empty stomach, you always tend to over-eat, over-order, or over-shop. So I always eat slightly before I'm famished.
Intelligent people tend to talk about the facts. They don't sit around and call each other names. That's what you can find on a third grade playground.
You get addicted to emotions. Our endorphins kick in and it's like a high. On the low end you might love roller coasters. On the high end you might be a bank robber or something.
The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it's a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.
If you elect a religious party into power, you no longer have a democracy.
Awards for arts, where you make comparisons, don't make much sense.
What happens a lot in film, though not so much in the theatre, is that you get stroked and sort of massaged, like a little guinea pig.
Six innings, you're doing your job. That's a good target to have, but I'm always looking to improve. There's three more innings of improvement left.
You can't expect a man to change in one day by watching a film, right?
My hands are delicate and elegant, thank you very much. They're well-kept; my nails are clean.
You know, there are no guarantees on prognosis.
You know that American dream and American spirit of innovation we always talk about? Turns out, the bulk of it was built by people who came to America from somewhere else, not people born American. We have no birthright or natural lock on these things.
I'm a bit of a traditionalist; the ballroom is all about tails and I never mess about with that. But for the Latin you can have a bit fun: tight trousers, gold shirt open to my waist, be a bit ridiculous.
One of the main pitfalls of any theoretically 'niche' show is that you spend too much time on the 'niche' and not enough time on the 'show.'
I think connecting to a character is like connecting to any human being - either you like them or you don't. You might not be able to list the reasons why you love your best friend or what attracted you to them; it's just something that you feel - a connection, an understanding, or a curiosity that makes you want to get to know them.
To me, I have my friends who I've known my whole life, and I can count them on one hand. They're people I went to school with, my mum's friends' daughters. You know?
When you think about John Coltrane, in my opinion - and I think I share this opinion with a lot of people - his approach to music changed other people's approach to music.
You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know.
Dressing up used to be more of a thing. My dad wore a suit always. Now you think, why bother?
A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road - you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience.
Sometimes in New York, you're walking down the street and you realize there's a girl walking in front of you whose thighs you could hit a golf ball through, and maybe that makes you depressed.
Then all this started to pick up because I signed with ForeFront when I was in seventh grade. It got a lot busier and I was traveling a lot and it wasn't making sense. Especially at a private school, you miss two days, and you get so behind.
You meet your soulmate, and you're like, 'Well, this is it. This is the feeling of falling in love, and it's the most intense it can ever be.' Then you have a child, and it's like - it's huge!
