I think that anybody coming out and saying, 'This is who I am, and let me show it to you...' is good for the world.
When I was 11 years old, I was a member of 'Press Pack,' which was a thing that would come out in 'The Sunday Times' in England. You'd write articles and send them off and would get a badge saying 'Official Press.' I was really excited about my badge.
If I am 100% prepared for the fight, my opponent has no chance to win the fight. I am saying what I mean: He has a 0% chance to win the fight. There is going to be no luck involved; there is going to be nothing else to stop me from winning the fight.
I think Michael Moore is an amazing man - an amazing, brave man. And I think people are probably going to start saying, 'Don't associate with Cindy Sheehan.' People who speak truth to power somehow are marginalized in this country.
I personally wouldn't want my second album to sound like my first; it might sound very rocky or hard rock - and that wouldn't be melancholy. So if people think my music is melancholic, then so be it. It's meant to be uplifting, and I'm just basically saying what needs to be said.
People in Sweden are very conscious of what people are saying about you.
For me, saying 'I'm bossy' is a cute, tongue-in-cheek way of saying that I'm in control of my life.
As actors, we don't shy away from saying, 'I wanted to be an actor because I wanted to meet girls.' Directors cannot say the same thing.
Even though there wasn't much damage, it's a disgrace that the skies over the imperial capital should have been defiled without a single enemy plane being shot down. It provides a regrettably graphic illustration of the saying that a bungling attack is better than the most skillful defense.
I am not afraid of saying something and going and pursuing it. That's it. I see it in my mind. I say it out loud. I go and do it.
What I'd really like to write is a romantic comedy. This is my favorite kind of movie. I feel almost embarrassed revealing this, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.
A few people have tried to make me see that my writing isn't quite their thing by saying to me: 'What about realism?' To which my general response is, 'What about it?' However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of my favorite writers, Marilynne Robinson, was to say something similar if asked 'What about the fantastic?'
You start thinking about a character in a new book, of course you're going to think pretty soon, 'Well, what's their secret? What is their problem?' Maybe, 'What is their secret?' is another way of saying, 'What is their problem?' There's got to be some issue, or you've got a totally boring book!
My own saying is: 'Create the hype, but don't ever believe it.'
I travel so much and am always living out of a suitcase, so my favorite saying is 'Wherever you go, there you are'. I love it because it's reassuring to me that you have to live in the moment wherever you happen to be.
Criticism is fine and conversation is fine, but the person who's criticizing should know what they're saying and whom they're criticizing.
I started saying things in church that didn't meet with a lot of approval - like 'Jesus isn't coming back.' They started throwing Bibles.
Every time I talk about this, I say: when the singer is singing, he must be respected, you must be able to hear what he's saying. You can't put a trombone and a drum up there, and a microphone on the drum, microphones on everybody. You can't hear what he's saying.
Every actor starts out saying, 'I can play anything in the world: I'm only 25, but I can be a man 70 years old. I'll put on a gray wig and do it.' But nobody hires you for that. You have to play yourself on the screen.
Rather than saying people aren't interested when things don't take off, you should take it on yourself to say, 'I'm not doing a great job of telling the story in a way that makes it interesting.'
Look at all the misery in the Middle East, for example. All these countries have Islam in common, and far too few dare to criticize Islam as an ideology, and what it's doing to these countries. I know I might get punched in the face for saying these things, but my conviction is that less religion in the world would be better.
Trump, of course, has been very wrong in the past about important issues such as President Barack Obama's place of birth and Mexican immigrants, but the Republican frontrunner is correct in saying that former Republican President George W. Bush did not keep the country safe during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
There's so much of our psychological makeup which is impermissible for us to explore because it's inappropriate or perverse or scary. I'm interested in exploring that in myself. I try to be honest with myself about everything that I feel. I'm not saying I'm able to do that all the time, but it's something I'm interested in.
It's the default premise in science: If you observe something in nature only once, you assume that what you've seen is typical. That's because 'typical' is just another way of saying 'most probable.'
I want to make sure that I can stand behind every word I'm saying, because whoever I am in six months is going to have to be accountable.
As an actor, it easy to be so self-critical, saying to yourself, 'Am I good enough? Am I good looking enough? Am I smart enough?'
I met Kim Kardashian the other week, and she knew who I was! I walked in the room, and she was like, 'I should text Kanye saying you're here; he showed me your music.' It's really hard to digest. Also, I don't think you should digest stuff like that.
If I'm honest, my heart and my belly are saying that you're more likely to find me in a greasy spoon than a pop-up, but some of this pop-up stuff is great!
Many hated 'Selma.' Just because my voice and the voice of the people I come from is antithetical to so much of what Hollywood produces. I don't think what I'm saying is in particular radical or anything; it's just different from what they want to sell.
'Elf' has become this big holiday movie, and I remember running around the streets of New York in tights saying, 'This could be the last movie I ever make,' and I could never have predicted that it'd become such a popular film.
If I say, 'I forgive you,' I have implicitly said you have done something wrong to me. But what forgiveness is at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.
What the Republicans have said is rather than touch one hair on the heads of the wealthiest people in our country, people who make over $1 million a year, they're saying, 'Seniors should pay $6,000 more dollars a year. But please don't let us ask the wealthiest to do their fair share.'
Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'
People tend to think about trade as if it's competition between companies - if Apple wins, Google loses. But that's false. Trade makes nations better off in general. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that everything about trade is good and beneficial. Trade also has costs.
Understanding who you are is saying, 'You're great; you have tons of confidence, and don't ever forget that.' And that helped me, man. Because when things weren't going right, I thought, 'You've got to remember who you are. Don't stray from that. Don't let these things get you down.'
The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that no one is stopping you. There's no one saying, 'You can't do that.'
