I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.'
You can focus on things that are barriers or you can focus on scaling the wall or redefining the problem.
If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.
'Canticum Sacrum' is wonderfully archaic. What Stravinsky does is extraordinary. It takes you on a journey from Gregorian chant right through to the modernism of Webern - and all in 17 minutes.
In Canada, you can't even have a barbecue in your backyard without being attacked by a moose or even a grizzly bear. Then again, the grizzlies don't beat anyone here in Vancouver; oh, it's true, it's true.
And as far as possible for sickness or fatigue, constrain yourself to eat in the hall before your people, for this shall bring great benefit and honour to you.
If I have on a bright red lip, you'll rarely ever catch me with eyeshadow on. It's one or the other for me - pick one feature for the day and really focus on that.
I looked on YouTube for sleep deprivation and there were videos of people experimenting with staying awake for a while. You saw all the different stages.
I could pose as a Yahoo rep claiming that there's been some sort of fault, and somebody else is getting your e-mail, and we're going to have to remove your account and reinstall it. So what we'll do is reset the current password that you have - and by the way, what is it?
When you are in control of what the final product is, there is kind of no limitation to what you feel like you can do because you know that if you don't like it, you can just cut it out.
I went to drama school for three years, and the whole thing there is that hopefully you are introduced to a man called William Shakespeare who is the greatest of all time of all storytelling.
If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.
I had a friend whose family had dinner together. The mother would tuck you in at night and make breakfast in the morning. They even had a spare bike for a friend. It just seemed so amazing to me.
I hope it's not all I'll ever do, but I know I've played enigmatic characters. For me, the good characters are people who get places, are devious, are cunning and tricky and hard to pin down. Obviously, if you play one and you do an okay job of it, that'll be on people's minds.
It's easy to get caught up in a moment and think, 'Oh, I've been offered some giant studio film or a superhero franchise or some actor wants to meet with me about a project they want to do.' And it's easy to get caught up in a moment because it's flattering. But you can't do a movie because it's flattering.
You need to become a good listener. As you're working, you hear someone else's lines and how you absorb them becomes your acting.
Look, you've got a generation of people coming along who are going to form their own new relationship with the idea of supporting the causes that they care about or changing the world. And these people are not going to do it the way our parents do it.
These are my new shoes. They're good shoes. They won't make you rich like me, they won't make you rebound like me, they definitely won't make you handsome like me. They'll only make you have shoes like me. That's it.
Also, from a technical point of view, as you're standing in front of a microphone all day, it's quite a good idea that I should play a laid back sort of character because if he was too frenetic, I'd be exhausted by lunch!
I was told once if I kept breaking things on my legs, that I wasn't going to be able to walk soon, you know? I wanted to be a pro skateboarder, but it was too hard. I was trying, but it wasn't going to happen.
You know among people who kind of travel a lot and have exposure to the United States and some other countries, they do have accounts, but you know, Russia is not exactly the place with multiple language skills so local networks kind of have an edge.
This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.
People are still grasping for the miracle, and unfortunately, there are no miracles, if you do not exercise for a year, and let your body remain dormant, then you will gain weight.
If you don't know what makes green, you're going to try every color combination.
I assume you know what to do with this. That's why you were hired.
If you're feeling emotional when you're creating something, it'll sound that way.
If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.
The special relationship between the region and a regional celebrity means that people feel that they have a special investment in you.
Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad. That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.
I think that it's awkward watching a video with your mom, particularly when you're making out with a girl or a sexy scene. I would rather be away from that!
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
Often, the disparities in the ways men and women are treated are subtle; there are not these clear barriers that you have to break down.
Love means never having to say you're a zero.
As Jeopardy devotees know, if you're trying to win on the show, the buzzer is all. On any given night, nearly all the contestants know nearly all the answers, so it's just a matter of who masters buzzer rhythm the best.
You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.
You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.
