In the Freudian age, parents say to their children, 'Don't be defensive,' meaning, 'You have no argument,' but I was born in the age of Rommel, when defense was considered an honorable thing.
There was a misconception about me when I started off because I had my hair greased up and I have some vague resemblance to the hillbilly gene pool that Elvis came from. People would say, 'You want to be Elvis' and I would say, 'No'.
I think movies are great and I have a great time making them but they're not what keeps you warm at night, or what's ultimately the most important thing in anyone's life journey.
I don't want to have to say, Honey, you know, could you turn off the sports channel because I'm not a big sports fan, and I don't love the television being on just for the sake of turning on. I'd like turning on for some thing specific.
There are days when it takes all you've got just to keep up with the losers.
Never underestimate the capacity of another human being to have exactly the same shortcomings you have.
Going to Peru is, well, if you ever have an opportunity in your life to go there, you should do it because it is absolutely mind boggling.
I'd done table reads for my own screenplays, and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater, where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts, but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts.
When I was 12, all I wanted was to be good at school, and to do something admirable, something you can't take away from me because I'm not popular or beautiful enough.
You'll find individuals agreeing on this, but when they get into collective societies and larger groups they find it difficult to achieve group agreement.
You know, I'm no different from a fireman. You got to run into a fire no matter how big the blaze is.
Vanity is something that will only get in the way of doing your best work, and ultimately if you're truly vain you care more about your work than how you look in your work. I actually consider myself a pretty vain guy when it comes to that.
When you stop and look at so much of the kind of activism that has been triggered, the Tea Party and the like, as a result of Obama's efforts - TARP, the stimulus package, and now the health care reform - there is a lot of sense this government is changing.
Over a long period of time, living as if you were someone else is no fun.
I don't think you'll ever have a perfect world because we humans are prone to error, and so we're always in search of an upgrade.
The game of golf doesn't come rushing back to you. Last week I made a couple of fundamental mistakes that I probably wouldn't have made in the heat of the battle back when I was in my heyday, and those things have got to come back.
When two people first meet, they can only have a very ordinary kind of friendship. But when you begin to understand each other, when you get close to them, you discover that you're suddenly eager to know him or her even better.
I think that I'm busy in the present, and I don't want to go back. Well, there's been an unauthorized biography, and you can't stop them. It didn't worry me.
Taking away from someone else will never make you any better.
Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see.
Everything will be seen on your computer or BlackBerry or whatever devices we will be seeing in the future. Comedians will put their content on whatever server and send it to you specifically. We may even lose the live performance.
In the movies, you typically do get to see the script beforehand. TV is different because there are a lot of scripts in the future that you haven't seen. You commit to a show, and you have to believe in the showrunner and their team and the stories they're going to tell.
Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government, and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.
When you've got a society that is diverse, what happens is for a time, the issue is integrating your minorities into that society.
You can hardly judge women's effect on politics merely from the action of individual women officeholders.
Everyone says romance goes flying out the window when you've been together for an X amount of time. I think it's all up to you.
Stick to the classics, and you can't ever go wrong. I see old ladies on the street who have fabulous style and realize it's because they are probably wearing really classic items that they've had for years and years. I think if you find something that suits you, you should just stick to it.
Yeah, I mean, I put work out there for people to use and I'm grateful when you use it.
When someone says you can't do what you know you can do, then you can't do anything.
I know that sometimes the chemistry just isn't there between the model, photographer, hair and make-up. It's nobody's fault and you just have to do better next time.
You're torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that's really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don't understand the process?
I don't have beef with nobody... You know when it's beef, because then we just start playing scoreboard, and nobody wants to play scoreboard.
As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.
I'm looking for a deal from one of you TV networks to give Snoop Dogg his own hood TV show where I can find America's hottest hood artists.
There is some group of Americans who are really, really curious to understand how we ended up at this point, where every week it seems like you can turn on your TV and see some sort of abuse being heaped on black people.
I've been... chased by paparazzi, and they run lights, and they chase you and harass you the whole time. It happens all over the world, and it has certainly gotten worse. You don't know what it's like being chased by them.
