If you're going to play football, why not be the best at it that you can be and fulfill your potential?
When I started, I was a theater actress, and there were roles that I couldn't imagine not playing, like Rosalind in 'As You Like It.' I used to think I would die if I could play that. But then I started doing movies, and I had children, and I moved to Los Angeles. And now I kind of can't remember what those roles would be.
When we're children we're told love is going to be great: Just fall in love, the rest will take care of itself - and then we fall in love and we realize, Okay, this is actually really, really hard work. This guy doesn't just tell me I'm great every day, you know?
I was in the room with, you know, more than a dozen Republicans trying to negotiate the stimulus. Most of them decided the politics of the situation meant they should walk away, even if it wasn't responsible in terms of what our country needed right then.
It's kind of hard for you to be doing huge things and still be knowing what's happening on the street level.
I liked teaching Henry James. When you look down at a Henry James novel from a helicopter height, you find an intricate spider web that all clings together.
Anyway, what makes people look youthful is the quality of their skin and I don't think you can change that.
If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them.
What is exciting is taking back the excitement of being able to debut something to an audience in exactly the way you want to.
I just couldn't stand school. If I went, I'd skip after the first class. I didn't like to be told I had to study and had to do homework. There's a fact that you have to want to learn.
Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.
I feel like my job as a storyteller and director is to create an experience where the audience forgets they're in a cinema and can get lost in the story. Things popping out of the screen call attention to the artifice of what you're doing, so I use 3D as more of a window into a world behind the screen.
A journalist and an information architect face exactly the same problem - how to give shape to the pile of information in front of you in a way that will make it easy and natural for people to comprehend. I can't imagine any better preparation for the work I do now.
I don't find the business easy. The moment you start talking about the business, you start sounding like someone in Spinal Tap.
I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.
If you only take offense when the president of your party is compared to Hitler, then you're part of the problem.
But you know, as you say, the original versions of my films are getting out there, slowly.
I can't tell you how freeing it is to have my own label. For the first time in my career, I have total control.
Be Impeccable With Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
The Rock is the Rock, you know? He's the ultimate athlete, the professional man with precision. And you want precision from a 270-pound living, walking brick wall.
And I'm here to tell you, the reaction that I'm getting around the country, people are sick and tired of this word in Washington, compromise. This is why nothing ever gets done.
You got to play the flute as a flute, like that. You can't play like a tenor concept on soprano; it sounds wrong. But some guys do it, and they think it's O.K., but not so!
As a Liverpool boy, it is impossible not to think of the Beatles' question, 'Will you still need me when I'm 64?'
At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us. You can love completely without complete understanding.
You don't hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.
I hate looking backward, but every once in a while it sneaks up on you.
The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.
I've made movies that we're very successful that we're a complete surprise, and I've made movies that I thought we're going to be very successful that, you know.
Age is of no importance unless you are a cheese.
I think real life couples on screen are kind of deadly. For the most part, they're kind of deadly. You'd be surprised. Unless they're falling in love onscreen for the first time, you don't have quite the same energy for some reason.
You can't reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.
The pressure of survival in the big city will make you lose sight of your dream... Hang in there.
You see, it took me so long, it was such a struggle, to move myself out of musicals - because I had had a success, nobody wanted to allow me to direct a non-musical picture. It was so hard. And the only way I could get it going was to become a producer myself.
Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.
You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.
A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?
