Everybody understands that you're supposed to say 'our employees are our most valuable asset' to the point where, even if it's really true, they're not going to really trust you until you've earned that - same with customers.
Every time you find something that doesn't work, you're a step closer to what does work.
Our enemies, like the Grecian hero, have one vulnerable point. You have not touched it yet. What should have been their element of weakness has been suffered to remain an element of strength.
If you are doing mindfulness meditation, you are doing it with your ability to attend to the moment.
Did you notice what happened when digital photography arrived? Suddenly there were four times as many people on set for a shoot! It used to be a photographer, a couple of photo assistants, stylist and a fashion assistant, hair and make-up and that was about it.
It's not easy to retire at 31. In one respect I was glad I was done. But after a few years of having fun, I got a little restless. When you're 33, 34, and you don't have a focus, you can get kind of lost. As a man, you feel a little bit unfulfilled.
You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self.
Light and funny has a more compelling quality when you're younger. But I haven't abandoned the genre: I love falling down; I love Lucille Ball. It's just that a lot of those stories revolve around problems that I can't convincingly portray at this age.
You only live a short time... and you are dead a long time.
It's very nice to be able to write something you don't have to get four other people to agree with before it can become authoritative.
Sometimes you get so jaded, you don't have those initial connections and emotions with music, because you are promoting your own.
The thing about being in America is when you are driving with the sun on your back, there's hip hop. I never used to be into hip hop, but there's hip hop in the food, soul food, there's hip hop in the cars.
If you represent our country, it should represent us. It's supposed to be a two-way thing, but we live and we learn, and it's getting better.
It's a little weird exchanging pictures for money. You know what I mean. It makes me a little uncomfortable.
I'm trying to adapt - they say you have to adapt to vertigo.
You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.
Abraham is the shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He stands at the heart of these three faiths. And yet you know almost nothing about him.
My mother was the sweetest lady who ever lived on this planet, but if you tried to tell her that Jesus wasn't a Christian, she would stomp you to death.
I still have to work paycheck to paycheck. Being in show business doesn't indicate that you're a 'success,' in my opinion.
It's always so early in here, before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. Thank you for this life! Still I miss the alternatives. The sketches, all of them, want to become real.
Anything that keeps you happy and writing is part of my writing ritual: I like music, so I tend to have it playing in the background. But if I'm interested, I can write in an airport waiting areas.
It's very simple. You have to be faithful to your other half and not have secrets. That's my rule.
You get some confidence in your songwriting abilities and go for the essentials - guitar, bass, drums, vocals. Those are the basic band essentials that have to be in place before you go any further.
You wear your team out, and it's hard to get them back.
When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less.
You can turn something into art just because of the way you tell people to look at it.
Before Arthur, I'd dismissed altogether writing fiction. You only have so many semi-sharp arrows in your quiver, I'd told myself, and I was not going to be able to write a novel.
My feeling is that you don't go looking for troubles. The cross ought to find you. And so I never go out of my way. I figure I only get involved in things that I can't get around.
I like the drinking-out-of-the-fire-hose approach - you're getting way more than you can handle.
Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.
I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion.
Food might be more immediately important than history but if you don't understand what's been done to you - by your own people and the so-called 'they' - you can never get around it.
If you're an artist, it's great to have a knowledge of the business and be educated about that, but you've got to keep the balance right between business and artistry; otherwise, you get cynical.
I don't believe in the deplorable notion of realism in the cinema: you can over-reach it, and it becomes as false as convention.
Well, politics is much more severe than entertainment. You have to hit those points, in politics, word for word. You have to remember the date. You have to remember the website. You have to rehearse stories that might be asked, have anecdotes ready for questions that might come up.
