You have to know the forces that are against you and that are trying to break you down. We talk about the problems facing the black community: the decimation of the black family; the mass incarceration of the black man; we're talking about the brutality against black people from the police. The educational system.
Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.
What I aspire to do, and what I try the hardest to do, is write stuff that's very personal in its way. I figure I can only say things the way I say them, so I'm trying to do something that is kind of anti-generic.
I'm trying to get my head in the game, think about the questions I wanted to ask, breast milk is flying everywhere - over my notes - and I - how do you 'lean in' at that moment? What is the equivalent of that for Wolf Blitzer or Joe Scarborough?
Every wedding is slightly different from the other. But you always get to meet the funny uncle and the weirdo relatives, and there's always someone trying to beat you up for not playing enough Beatles songs or something.
I'm big on showing people versatility. I'm constantly trying to push myself to break barriers and the idea that we have to stay in one lane.
I'm trying to play parts which are a little more out there, but I want variety.
I see a lot of women of every age trying to be something else. I see them trying to imitate behaviors that they think belong to successful people.
Neal Stephenson handles exposition better than anybody else. I keep trying to learn his tricks, but every time I duck into his pages, I get lost in the stories all over again and forget that I'm a writer.
I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we're all excavating and trying to find something.
You're always trying to do something that, on one hand, honors all those stories, that is still in some way the same character that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were doing back in the sixties. But, at the same time, you want to be able to tell new stories and not just rehash what's come before.
When we worked on 'Girls,' we've had some really meaningful dialogue with our fans and with critics and really learned a lot of things. Like, on the question of diversity, we heard people, and we responded, which is very different from, like, 'Hey fatty, what are you doing on TV?' And that's what we're trying to avoid.
I sequence during the entire recording process. The sequencing changes as I'm recording and as I'm listening. From when I'm, like, four songs in, I start trying to figure out which song should come after which. Which is important, and it changes as the album goes.
If you're trying to avoid one move that you don't think is going to work out, don't then settle for a different move that maybe doesn't check all the boxes. Be true to the philosophy and understand the bigger picture. There's always another day to fight.
When trying to start a company, your enemy isn't criticism, anger or insults. Your enemy is apathy.
I am so behind on all TV, and I love TV, but I literally, I get home so late, and when I get some time, I'm trying to catch up on my DVR.
People always say, 'Why don't you make more movies like 'Heathers'?' And I say, 'I've been trying for 20 years.'
People think because I've got some success, I've made it, but in my eyes it's like, 'How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?' Not that I'm trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.
I try never to focus on the radio, just find great songs, find emotion and just write the best songs you can. I think when you get fixated on trying to do something too accurate, it becomes more washed out and less what you intended it to be. So I think each time the challenge for me is to try and reinvent a little bit.
Times were very hard if you were a poor, politically correct Jewish girl living in the east end of London during the Blitz and you were trying to eke out a living as a hairdresser.
Get your work in, do what you need do, and get back up top. I'm a little bit behind the curve as far as not really having a spring training, so you're trying to get your work in, trying to work on things, and at the same time, you're also going out there trying to be competitive.
I was just never discouraged from doing something wacky like trying to be a comedian.
I been trying to clean up my act with my children for a long time. And I pretty much got them all talking to me now. And they accept me as a humanoid again.
When one set of Jews labels another set of Jews 'anti-Semitic,' they are trying to monopolize the right to speak in the name of the Jews. So the allegation of anti-Semitism is actually a cover for an intra-Jewish quarrel.
By no means am I trying to change the modeling industry.
If a writer is always trying to keep a narrator emitting a tone of complete knowingness, it can become false.
Sometimes I would like the opportunity to do character-driven comedy and that's really what I was trying to do in Meet The Parents. I think in a way this is a more old fashioned type of comedy.
The hardest thing on 'Palo Alto' was letting go because I kept working on it, trying to make it better.
The people on this planet that are trying to live their life, that aren't trying to destroy things, are in the 99.9-percent majority.
A lot of times what happens is, not even just with child actors, but people in general, is they get so caught up in the now. The hot song, the hot TV show, the hot movie. You're not saying 'OK, this is cool, but where am I trying to be 20 years from now?' That's always been in the forefront of my mind.
If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people's expectations, then you can go mad.
I'm not trying to be romantic. I think you can tell when people are trying to be sexy onstage. When I was doing 'All the Way,' I was really thinking about my wife. People don't know my personal experience, but they can tell it's an honest interpretation.
To me, the scariest movie ever made to this day is 'The Exorcist.' It still scares the living hell out of me, and it's because of the fantasy element. It's the exorcism. It's the Devil. It's not a guy breaking into your house trying to torture you or cut your whatever off. Those kinds of movies don't do it for me, and I don't call them horror.
I haven't read a lot of science fiction, and I never intend to write it; it seems to happen a little bit inadvertently for me, in that I'm trying to follow people into points in their lives that demand that I investigate the future.
We have a memory cut in pieces. And I write trying to recover our real memory, the memory of humankind, what I call the human rainbow, which is much more colorful and beautiful than the other one, the other rainbow.
It's going to come down to executing, trying to keep guys off balance and disrupting timing. That's something you can do regardless of how many times you face a lineup or face certain hitters.
