When you see yourself on a 40-ft. screen. you go, 'Oh My God! I look so weird!'
Good actresses can often accomplish miracles, and it is possible to be someone you've never been or will be. But in a sitcom, there's no time.
If you're going to buy pasta, you should buy dry pasta. If you're going to make it you can make the real thing, but you shouldn't buy fresh pasta.
And, in fact, you can find that the lack of basic resources, material resources, contributes to unhappiness, but the increase in material resources do not increase happiness.
The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.
You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don't want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.
You must work very hard to become a natural golfer.
The greatest thing about golf, there's no end to it unless you're dead. You just go from here to the Senior Tour.
You see things differently at 40 than you do at 31. Especially if you got to 40 the way I did.
I suppose because I have a good ear, I could pick out harmonies and learn by ear. I still think that you have to have an ear for music to really be able to feel and understand what you're playing. You can learn by watching and listening to other people.
I grew up watching 'Magnum, P.I.' and shows like that, where you could develop a character over eight seasons, with stories along the way.
As you get older, your body doesn't hold up as much.
You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.
I think that Liverpool's particular modern history lends itself to the cinema better than London in many ways. When you go to Liverpool, you absorb that whole sound and humour.
Once you get used to censorship, sometimes you self-censor.
You have to remember a lot of business is very cyclical.
When I was about 12, I was studying Chinese and ballet with my brother, and one morning Jonathan said to me, 'I don't think I'm going to go to ballet class anymore,' and I looked at him and said, 'You know, I don't think I'm going to go to Chinese class anymore.'
And as a writer, one of the things that I've always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that's what we're supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.
If you see the Sopranos, you're not going to be speaking in the Shakespearean English.
I'm about as straight an arrow as you'll find out there.
We're writing a book together. She just finished one. Did you read it? Among the Porcupines?
One thing about television, it brings out personality. People are able to watch me in action. They hear my voice and see my eyes. There's nothing I can hide. That's me. Television brings out your flaws, your weaknesses, your strengths, and you truths. The audience either likes you or it doesn't.
It's less about the physical training, in the end, than it is about the mental preparation: boxing is a chess game. You have to be skilled enough and have trained hard enough to know how many different ways you can counterattack in any situation, at any moment.
Part of the film business is, if you want an apple, you buy an apple.
I would love to play the Femme Fatale or an action role like Trinity in the Matrix or something like that. You know, a part with a lot of costume changes.
Cause when you're sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.
Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
It's quite similar to guitar solos, only with programming you have to use your brain. The most important thing is that it should have some emotional effect on me, rather than just, 'Oh, that's really clever.'
I'm a parent, especially when you've had the intense parenting the way I had. It's all in the bank. It's all in the great experience bank. Those are your secrets. That's the stuff that makes your work rich, that's what you dip into.
I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine.
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.
My mother is a realist, and she's had biological and adoptive children, and she said it's no different: No matter what, they're putting a stranger into your arms. You don't know them yet.
There is no substitute for a real location when you're trying to shoot the jungle. You can't just go anywhere. You've got to go where it's lush and green and there really is those mountain ranges, the trees and the ocean.
What makes you a Christian is whether or not you really are in accord with biblical theology and whether you know Jesus Christ as your Saviour.
I think that quite often you can only find a choice between bad and worse. But I think it's worth making the effort, and I like to expose my characters to that sort of situation.
You don't have favorites among your offspring, and you don't among the artists you're involved with, but clearly among my most favorite was Patti Smith.
