When I wrote the eight fairy tales that appear in 'Horse, Flower, Bird' I was working toward a completely new form of artistic expression, trying to create a new kind of tale that also felt vintage: innocent and childlike, but haunted. I tried to write a picture-less picture book.
I'm an honest dude, not trying to be anything other than who I am.
Really, I'm trying to retire. It's just nobody will let me!
I do not have a problem, I enjoy gambling, but I think people are trying to make it seem like I have a problem, because people really don't know.
I am trying to persuade my family to spend more time in China. It's no fun to be in exile. I can't even figure out the basic 26 letters, let alone operate, in English. I often feel that although I've found the sky of freedom above my head, I've lost the soil I stand on. I need to be back in my motherland, where I can find inspirations.
I'm hopeless at looking into myself and trying to see how things are working and why.
You're trying your best to make people laugh; then if you fail, they hate you. But your intent's the same. It's not like you're trying to do evil to them.
If you're trying to understand why it is that certain things happen in Sacramento and certain things don't, at the end of the day, it comes down to the issue of incentives: We do what we're incentivized to do.
I don't think I'm unlike a lot of people. I am just someone who is trying to find that mate, and I think it's a really hard thing to do.
I really wanted the first record to be different from what I'd done with Genesis, so we were trying to do things in different styles.
Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy.
I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me.
I admit, I do a lot of projects, but it's because I'm in a position now where I'm reading a lot more scripts and plays and things, and I'm really listening to offers and trying to think what I want to do at any given time.
We are being super selective on who we bring in and really just trying to hire the very best.
I don't claim to be a particularly good father. I'm flawed, let's say. I've certainly been affected by the experience of having kids... trying to be a father, at least. It's an amazing process. It's like songwriting: it's a complete mystery to me. I don't understand it - but I've certainly written about it.
I'm trying hard to keep my Australian accent. My mom would disown me if I didn't.
About 10,000 people a day go on first dates from Match... We're trying to celebrate that, bring those success stories to the forefront and make it even easier in our product to meet up at Starbucks.
It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.
What I'm always trying to say to the consumer is: buy less, choose well, make it last.
I don't have any particular loyalties to one technique or another. I'm just trying to use the best for the job.
My first restoration was on 'Napoleon,' trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.
I remember trying to explain the class system to a Canadian friend when we started at RADA. The funniest thing was when I told her what bonfire night is all about. It's quite dark when you start breaking it down.
The version of 'Moneyball' I pitched - and we made - is about a guy, Billy Beane, who thinks he's trying to win baseball games. But it's deeper than that.
Forecasting our futures is built into our psyches because we will soon have to manage that future. We have no choice. No matter how often we fail, we can never stop trying.
I think humans are fascinating in general. We're so weird. We do so many quirky things, and we don't even know it. There's just so many layers upon layers of nuances in everything we do, and the most fun part as an actor is trying to get into all those nuances, whether they're conscious or unconscious.
I'm not interested in going to casting after casting, trying to get into that game. So there is a part of me that knows that I will do more characters, even if I have to produce those projects myself to get those projects out there. If the right characters come along, I would love to. I would jump at the chance.
It's impossible to be someone you're not, so quit trying. I am as passionate about my hobbies as I am about my work and my family. All three are equally important to me at all times.
Popular kids don't necessarily know who they are because they're so busy trying to conform. It's the outcasts who are more attuned to who they are. They're more self-aware, more real.
I've been trying to understand conflict and violence ever since I was a kid. You know. There were a few things that happened even on my block - the Black Panthers used to be right around the corner from where we were.
On a regular basis if you're trying to produce something, I think you should work every day and set achievable goals.
We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true. You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents.
I'm still trying to decide. It's a really difficult one because I really enjoy my time in the Air Force. And I'd love to continue it. But the pressures of my other life are building. And fighting them off or balancing the two of them has proven quite difficult.
In 1976 I wrote a lot about women trying to claim the right to work.
In art, at a certain level, there is no 'better than.' It's just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.
Life doesn't just happen; it's constructed through the history of power. And that's something I am interested in and so is the art world: a world that's trying to engage socially, with a leftist slant, to work out how we got here.
I've been trying to get into comedy for years. I had a meeting with one of the networks a couple years ago, a general meeting, and when they asked what I was looking for and I told them I'd prefer to do comedy, it was as if I had two heads.
