You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and you could be yawning your head off when you hear them. So, it's not what you do, but the way you're doing it and in the end that's all that we have.
I started acting when I was 10, doing musical theater. I was a brunette at that time. I was always cast in all the exotic parts.
I'm a big believer in playing truth and not doing things for effect. It's not about whether you look pretty or glamorous. It's about whether people connect. That's important to me in any work I do. For me, the key is always trying to find the connection between the audience and the character I'm playing.
Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.
I got involved in lots of different areas round about 2007, 2008. Just working with lots of different people and stretching myself in different ways. I was working on art projects and working with other writers, just doing bits and pieces, trying to keep busy.
I didn't mean to live in Portland. It was kind of an accident - I mean, the equivalent of my car breaking down there and me being like, 'Well... I guess this is what I'm doing. I just can't find a better alternate.'
I wouldn't totally rule out doing Letterman or the Tonight Show if I had a set that I just happened to write that I thought was funny but was still appropriate for network censors. But I'm not going to go out of my way.
I never thought that I would treasure doing my job, and I have reached that point. I've gotten to a point where it's like the priesthood: this is what I was called to do.
I don't want to become a star. I never wished to become an actor, even when I am here. When you decide to become an actor, you've to choose why you're doing it. Are you doing it to become an actor or because you want to be famous? I am doing it because I love being in front of the camera.
And I think more than anything else, I know when I go to bed that no one's working harder doing what I'm doing, and I think, quite frankly, simply that hard work at some point was gonna pay off.
I sort of fell in love with it when I was in high school doing theater. And so, as sometimes happens when kids - they graduate high school, and people turn to them and say, 'So what are you going to do with your life?' I thought, 'Well, I like being onstage. I like being an actor.'
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
It was doing very well; it was doing particularly well outside of England. It was a very big seller for Carlton Television. But it was getting more and more expensive to do.
Everything officers go through in any chase anywhere in the country, but amped up 100 times! I'm right in the thick of things in a car going like 80 miles an hour, and doing 360s in the middle of the road. It was a wild ride.
I don't judge others. I say if you feel good with what you're doing, let your freak flag fly.
I had a blast doing the Warped Tour, but it's good to be home, for sure.
Jessi is a great person. She really is. She's been a friend to me all through all my bad times, and she's understood what I was doing. She came up with that one saying, which was great.
Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.
The companies that I really admire the most are the ones that have a deep visceral understanding of why people use their service, and they figure out ways of making money that are completely consistent with how people are feeling and what they are doing at the time.
The auctioneer is talking for both people, and that's the big revelation about, 'Oh, that's what they're doing.' They're just doing it very fast, so you could kind of miss on that. He's speaking for you, because people in the crowd don't have a voice, so that's what really makes it compelling.
I'm told I'm an incredible flirt because I don't know I'm doing it. I don't want to even analyse it, but I seduce people, apparently; I suck them in.
Why would I want a place of my own? Then I would have to things worry about, like doing laundry and having food in the fridge.
Doing business with Cuba is good for America.
I was always the lead role in plays. I like entertaining people. I like when you're on stage doing crazy stuff and the audience gets it.
I know that sounds selfish, but you have to look at what it's doing to you personally - are you frustrated because of the way people perceive you, or are you happy enough about the things you've realized about yourself that you can tolerate the way people perceive you?
It's not like I had big dreams to go to California and become an actor. I loved doing my shows at school and community theater, and I probably would have settled in New York because it was closer. I was going to go to NYU.
The interesting thing about doing a play is to find a way to make it fresh and do it as though you were doing it for the first time.
When I was doing poorly at school, my father yanked me out and got me a job in a shoe factory. After three weeks, I begged him to give me another chance at doing well in school. I learned that discipline is necessary to accomplish anything in life.
But even at the height of these scandals, even at the time when our finances were at their worst, the NAACP branches - the grassroots - kept plugging away. They kept doing what they do, and they do it well.
I always want to do things that are different. I don't want to be doing the same thing, the same performance constantly, and it feels like most people tell you that they are the same. However different you feel might approach them.
Having a strong sense of self is fundamental to you, no matter what you're doing. I don't care if you're a stay at home mom raising kids or if you're the CEO of a corporation. It's really important for your survival.
Don't leave hold of your common sense. Think about what you're doing and how the technology can enhance it. Don't think about technology first.
Does anybody know what I'm doing up here?
When I was going to gay bars in my 20s and 30s, the older guys there explained to me that the police would occasionally raid these places and march the clients out, load them onto paddy wagons, drive them down to the station, photograph them, fingerprint them and put their names on a list. They were doing nothing wrong, and it was criminalized.
Basically, the start of my thinking process is: 'OK, if you didn't have to worry about re-election, what would you be doing?' That's kind of how I'm starting to think.
What's the point of doing something good if nobody's watching.
