Life is about making plans from which you deviate, almost always. If you are lucky, you do come up with a plan.
Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned.
I think travel is probably the downside of playing professional golf, but you've got to do it.
When you're up for an Oscar, you just get offered everything. It's fantastic, but a lot of it you're completely inappropriate for.
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
Women, you can have it all - a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career.
My job is to form the people, the story, the sentences. Every reader will bring their own life and their own history to the story and shape it accordingly. I guess you can say it's like I am sending them a letter.
But find something that you absolutely love doing. And then get to love the way you do it. That's the uniqueness of all of us. That's it.
You didn't hear the angels singing. It was brought down to Mother Earth, which is where it should be. And that led me to a lot of other reading.
The songwriting community in Nashville really is all about your talent. It's not about your image, and you have to be humble. You have to be kind. You have to have zero ego when you walk into that writing room.
When I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but in Milan I do not. Do you also follow the custom of whatever church you attend, if you do not want to give or receive scandal.
If someone is making a judgment when they don't have firsthand experience, it's intolerant. How can you make a judgment on something you don't know about?
The Soviet Union had only one party. You couldn't express yourself freely; you couldn't admit belief in God. And yet this terrible regime understood that human beings have to express themselves, through music, even at a bad level. All kids studied music automatically, just as they did maths or languages or sport.
If you got what it takes, you'll make it. If you don't, Shakespeare couldn't help you.
There are comedians that I like. I think a lot of it, you just figure out on your own. It's definitely one of those things that you get good at by doing it a lot. But I like Jim Gaffigan. Patton Oswalt. Janeane Garofalo.
I am a filmmaker. That is all I've ever been. You know, Martin Scorsese makes films about the mob. And I make movies about food.
Theatre people, who are an adaptive species, know that to remain sane in the process of production where everyone and his uncle has an opinion about how to fix a show, you must pick the people whose knowledge and taste you trust and stick only to these few. The Tweetocracy is no place to look.
When you're too robotic and scripted, the students tune you out. So I always tried to use different learning modalities - kinesthetic, auditory, visual, whatever might bring learning to life.
One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.
I guess if they ever do a remake of 'Sophie's Choice,' I could play the Meryl Streep part. I've got to work on my Polish accent. Maybe I'll be the definitive King Lear one day. You know, if they ever feel that King Lear should be more Jewy.
It's a little like casting out hundreds of fishing lines into the audience. You start getting little bites, then more, then you hook a few, then more. Then you can start reeling them in and that's a loveliest feeling - the whole audience laughing with you.
What good does it do to be afraid? It doesn't help anything. You better try and figure out what's happening and correct it.
See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky?
Unfortunately, it happens all too seldom that you really disappear behind a work, that you are no longer audible as an interpreter.
Similarly, another famous little quantum fluctuation that programs you is the exact configuration of your DNA.
The one thing that TV is bad at doing is preaching. There are two extremes, you either turn the people into a punchline or turn them into hero, and both of those things suck, because most people are neither in real life.
I think mortality makes you live a fuller existence. When I was a kid I was scared of death, and maybe that's what made me desperate to get the most out of life.
For all its flaws, 'The Hands of Orlac' really is a seminal film, and if you're partial to that particular B-movie subgenre of Demon Body Parts, you really ought to see it.
I'm appreciative of things going wrong. At first it sounds crazy, but how boring would life be if you just coasted along without any challenges? Without learning about who you really are through the process of going through the darker times? Without feeling the sense of elation when you reach even a small stepping stone?
And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.
By the time you're 18, 19, you know yourself, and you shouldn't go against your gut feeling, which is a temptation in the first year of university.
I really try to focus on organizations, twofold, one that help people and/or beings that don't have other means of help. Particularly if they're hospitalized children, sick children, children that don't have homes, children that can't go to school, you know that's the future of this country and the future of this planet.
Whenever you're aggressive, you're at the edge of mistakes.
In times of war, starvation, hunger and injustice, such tragedy can only be put aside if you allow yourself to be uplifted through music, film and dance.
When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.
There's a guy in London named Ben Cohen who is doing great things. In a way, we need people like Ben - we need straight guys to come out and say, 'What're you worried about? Get over yourself.' That's what we need! Because no one's listening to us - certainly, no one is listening to me.
