There's music every day. I don't think I could write without it. Not that I listen while I'm writing. It's more hearing a piece of music that I want to somehow convert into prose, as a creative inspiration.
The idea of a piece of literature as a vessel that could contain your life and lived after you had died and been forgotten struck me as akin to artificial intelligence.
You know there's nothing a Hill Democrat would rather do than criticize another Democrat. It is their favorite activity. Then they can read about how honorable they are in an Op-Ed piece, how bipartisan.
A lot of times on our show, 'Shadowhunters,' we have excuses to dawn some kind of sexy black leather attire under the excuse that we're going to fight demons, but it's all part of the tone of the piece and the tone of the story.
I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
I was 16 and got my boyfriend's name tattooed on me. Don't do it. 'Cause it hurts. The moment you do it, the next month, the next year, you'll be broken up - trust me - and cover-ups hurt. You can show your love in other ways. Ink is not it. Write it on a piece of paper and mail it to him.
When I design a garment or a piece of accessory, the first question I ask myself is, 'Would I wear it?'
I've always been fascinated by books. When I was young, my grandfather used to hand out a book - which would be anything from a biography to a classic - to me every week and ask me to write a piece on what I thought about it. On the other hand, my mother used to love reading thrillers and bestsellers.
Never trust people; always trust paper. I'd marry a piece of paper if I could.
It's always humbling, knowing where we came from. From being friends with the janitor in the bar and being friends with the waitress - because they were some of the only people that were listening when we finished playing - to this, we are able to appreciate every single person and every single piece of it, because we came from nothing to this.
It's the little details I love. How to fletch your arrows with owl feathers, because owls fly silently, so maybe your arrows will, too. How to carry fire in a piece of smouldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which help a world come alive.
Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not an expensive piece of wood. Far from it. Just a common block of firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to make cold rooms cozy and warm.
The most extraordinary thing about trying to piece together the missing links in the evolutionary story is that when you do find a missing link and put it in the story, you suddenly need all these other missing links to connect to the new discovery. The gaps and questions actually increase - it's extraordinary.
Imagine you can tell YouTube you have an hour to watch TV, and it would give you programming based around what you have watched in the past, what your friends watched and recommended, what your favourite celebrities tweeted about, and on one piece of input from you about what mood you are in.
I guess if I was made responsible for every single line of dialogue in a game and every single piece of textual visual detail, every sign or piece of graffiti, then yes, I think that would be comparable to the time and effort required to write a very long novel, indeed.
Of course, it's wonderful to film any period piece - but especially 'Foyle's War' because the art direction is so imaginative and yet at the same time so real. You can open a drawer on set, and even though the camera never sees what's inside, it'll be filled with genuine 1940s documents.
When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.
When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things that are difficult to put into words. In the work, everything belongs to everything else - the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said.
An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it's all of a piece.
When you're making something big, whether it's long-form fiction or a big piece of software, whatever that is, you're having a very intimate and extended conversation with the work materials themselves.
There are people who'll dismiss me as 'just' a singer. That's how it is, how it's always been, but just because I'm not hunched over a piece of paper with a pen in my hand doesn't mean I'm not putting in the graft.
I don't think you can approach any piece of art with boundaries or rules. I think respect is a very important thing, but I also think what we discover along the way is really important.
He really loved baseball and loved being on the field. But Mantle was lonely in a lot of ways. He had many great friends, and by all accounts was a good, generous and loyal friend. But there were a lot of people who wanted only a piece of him.
You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.
I had a brilliant drama teacher while I was at Roland Park: Ann Mainolfi. But the school was mostly rich in academics. It wasn't like I was prepping myself for a life in acting. There, you prepped yourself to have a stable future. The school's piece de resistance is college prep - it didn't teach you how to audition for a TV show.
Sometimes when you're working on a period piece, there's this tendency to be nostalgic about the period and do everything superglamorous, which can end up looking cliche.
When I get up in the morning and put on a pink or a green wig, I see myself as a piece of animation. It lets me be the person I want to be, a person who's not embarrassed to have fun.
I remember Karoi as a very hot, flat place, but in reality, it is all hills. We just lived next to an airstrip - the only flat piece of land around. That was my world as a three-year-old and sums up the indelible power of memory to a young child.
I know that the writers I read and admire all have an influence on my work, but trying to determine to what degree any particular piece of input changes the way I think about writing seems counterproductive.
If the seams are showing, there is something wrong with the performance or the construction of the piece. This idea is completely at odds with our modern visual experience, because everything today is based on montage.
I became a millionaire overnight by signing a piece of paper. I made more money in that one second than my entire family did in their lifetime.
Lack of confidence - every time I start a new piece of work, it seems I have to spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it.
Filmmaking is finding a piece of granite and you start to chip away and then you have the shape of a head, the shape of the arm, you can see the shape of the face and the face starts to gather character. You have to find it.
We were poor. My mother got our clothes out of the free box at the church, you know? So much of when you're a kid is about relating about what you watch on TV. And who's got these cooler shoes, and 'Let's trade lunches.' And I was just like, 'I don't have a television. I have a rock and a piece of tofu.'
The truth is that when Lennon is Bosephus, she is so mean to me. She can't smile because the mustache will come off. So in between takes, it's just scowling. And then when we are on camera, Bosephus treats me like a piece of meat. I'm repulsed and also attracted to it.
Having girlfriends is... I can't do it. It doesn't mean I don't hang out with girls. It just means that I don't like being in a relationship, because it makes things very complicated. The one piece of advice that I listen to adults on - because I don't listen to adults when it comes to most things - is that I'm too young to have a girlfriend.
