The business is a very tricky obstacle course, and you should be very clear about work begetting work. If you're not working, you're not interesting.
When you are a character actor they trust you will go in and give them a full character and leave.
If we continue to fight the National Rifle Association on their home court, which is the legislative front, I think we'll continue to be frustrated. But when you have an ability to go directly to the public, that's a completely different field of engagement, and I think the NRA is not adept at that kind of engagement.
What looks absolutely fabulous in rehearsal can fall flat in front of an audience. The audience dictates what you do or don't change.
Pitching keeps you in the games. Home runs win the game.
I'm very optimistic about the future, because... Okay, with Audra McDonald, even just on Broadway, they cast her in shows that are usually not played by African-American women, so she's very inspiring to me just because of that, you know what I mean?
Community service has taught me all kinds of skills and increased my confidence. You go out there and think on your feet, work with others and create something from nothing. That's what life's all about.
If you love your job, you haven't worked a day in your life.
I'm taking a philosophy class and regretting it with everything in me. I'm taking one college class per semester. Philosophy is studying what you already know and dismantling it. I thought it would be right up my alley. I can't tell you how much it's not me.
I live in Hollywood. Go three feet and you will run into someone more cut and better looking than me. For me, working out is more about keeping my temperament great. Jujitsu and lifting keep me very even.
It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble.
I'm having to learn to get the balance right, because if you want a full-time career, and you also want to be a mother who is there for your child, then you have to make sure that when you do spend time together, you're really there for them.
If you come from Paris to Budapest you think you are in Moscow.
There is nothing that is so serious that you can't also see its comic side. Comedy is a way of talking about the most serious things.
I always think my face is quite nondescript - it sort of fits in to any period. It's not really distinct enough for you to remember me from something.
Just because you donate sperm does not make you a father. I don't have a father. I would never give him the credit or acknowledge him as my father.
Take a random selection of photographs of America in 2012 and 2002 and 1992 and, except for the skinny jeans and the porkpie hats, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the years in which the pictures were taken.
I remember when the Bic pen was controversial. They came from France. They were cheap, and when one was out of ink, you threw it away; you didn't dip it into more ink.
Nobody knows how long they have left on Earth. There's no guarantees, and for me, when they tell you - not once, twice, three times - 'You've got a couple weeks to live,' or a couple months, you have to determine how you want to do that.
I like writing a lot more than I used to. I used to find it scary but now I've got used to it once it gets going. I used to find it hard to start. Fear of the blank page. The first thing you write down won't bear any relation to what's in your head and that's always disappointing.
Post 9/11, brown people had this force pushing us together. It's like we're all being looked at with fear and suspicion; we're all being targeted, so how do you support yourself and your communities?
You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.
You don't have to be a brain surgeon to be a valuable person. You become valuable because of the knowledge that you have. And that doesn't mean you won't fail sometimes. The important thing is to keep trying.
Your primary presumption that The Bridge was proffered as an epic has no substantial foundation. You know quite well that I doubt that our present stage of cultural development is so ordered yet as to provide the means or method for such an organic manifestation as that.
When you put an album out, you can't do any material from the album if people are paying to see you.
And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.
Some of the hotels I've been put up in for work in Scotland have been shockingly bad. They're the type of hotel where the bedroom is like a cell and the Internet doesn't work. I feel quite aggrieved at that because you should at least be treated reasonably well and have basic comfort.
You have to be tough-skinned and willing to accept criticism, and at the same time, just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it's going to take to get you on the radio.
You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.
What is important is to have values in life. What's important is how you are, not how you look.
Let's be very clear, if you check the F.E.C. records you will see I am supporting George W. Bush.
I think women are very complicated human beings, and I think there's an oversimplification of women when you see them on screen.
In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.
You have to win something for people to think about you.
When you are born rich, you have all these options. You can pursue a career path that you find interesting; there's no need or pressure to start working to get funds just for survival, which is something a lot of people have to struggle with.
I don't know exactly what are you supposed to do when you retire. Lie on the couch and do nothing? I didn't want to do that.
