You put as much effort as you can when they're young into trying to teach them to be good people or make them the best they can be, and they're older now, my kids. I'm at that stage where I let them go, and you just hope that all that nurturing you did earlier on sticks, and you launched good people out there.
I still see life entirely through its Darwinian prism. I keep trying to shake off the aftereffects of writing 'The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead', and I find I can't.
Without really trying to, I've become a sort of jailhouse lawyer of relationships - someone who's had to do so much work on her own case that I can now help you with yours.
I have so many passions. I'm just going to keep trying to go forward and see where they take me.
As a vegetarian eating a plateful of eggs, I found myself in this weird place where I didn't want to think about where those eggs came from. I didn't want to think about the treatment of the animals who produced those eggs. When I find myself trying not to think about things, it seems to me that I'm practicing avoidance.
That's the great thing about university: you've got people around you who are taking a risk and trying things out themselves. It gives you the confidence to try and take it to the next step, which was drama school.
As an actor, you're listening to the other person and always trying to be present and take everything they're giving you, but when they're not there, you have to produce that yourself.
I get 100 e-mails a day from Americans who say, 'What you're doing is cool - can we work for you?' From Germans, I also get 100 e-mails a day, saying, 'You fat pig!' or 'You're a liar and a criminal!' I'm trying to change this.
At the Home Run Derby, you're expected to hit home runs. You're up there trying to hit home runs.
I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.
I've been in L.A., but I wasn't acting. I didn't know that I wanted to act, so I was in L.A. but working at a restaurant seven days a week and trying to figure out what I wanted to do and all that kind of stuff.
Behind every great man is his wife trying to keep him alive.
When I graduated from high school, I had artistic and academic scholarships, and I was trying to figure out what to do. I decided to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Juilliard and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, Australia.
Cyprus has a reputation as a laundromat for the Russians who are trying to avoid sanctions.
Obama is not only obstructing budget reform; it's almost as if he is trying to make matters worse.
We're all about trying to teach the kids life through basketball.
I'm one of those people you can tell 'no' a million different ways, and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to figure out some way to get you to say 'yes.' People have always underestimated me. I have great stamina, great tenacity.
Sometimes I'm not even aware of some of the issues going on with me in my life until I sit down and start kind of looking for inspiration, trying to find something that inspires that creativity.
We always correct people who say, 'You're trying to make this look better.' Well yes, we want it to look better, but that's easy. The look and the function are one and the same. They are not separate. It looks good because it functions beautifully. That message is very hard.
As a dramatist, you have 200 choices at every fork in the road. But the audience will reject it if you make the wrong choice, if they feel you are trying to shape the character in a way that suits you. It rings false immediately. People can sense when you're being cynical or schematic.
I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash.
I just don't like showing everything I've got. I don't want to look like I'm trying too hard to be sexy.
I'm constantly trying to keep people guessing as to what I'm doing, and I will spend enormous amounts of time looking at manuscripts and asking questions, and people will say, 'I know what his next book is about.'
I don't have a favorite medium; I was brought up on TV. so I am clearly of the TV generation, but it depends on what you are trying to sell; sometimes a fully integrated solution, sometimes a pure Internet solution, sometimes a pure billboard solution.
I'm a student of patterns. At heart, I'm a physicist. I look at everything in my life as trying to find the single equation, the theory of everything.
If you start trying to figure out yourself from the image everyone has of you, you run into a dead end.
I'm a perfectionist. I won't do a thing without trying to do it well.
If we're going to go really deep, we're all trying to live forever. My music is my way of doing that.
There will be a 'Guardians 3,' that's for sure. We're trying to figure it out. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. Really, that's all it is.
One of the reasons surgeons have so much trouble separating Siamese twins is that nobody gets to do many of them. On the table, the anatomy is so different from normal, that you're constantly trying to figure out, 'Can I cut this? Does this wire lead to what?' It's like trying to defuse a bomb.
All of us that have teams want to pick the right people. I've thought a lot about that. In the NFL, we've got 13 scouts traveling the country. We're trying to pick 22 year-olds coming out of college who will be successful in the NFL. It's very hard to do. What I've learned is it's always character first.
I'm pretty good with talking to girls if I have an introduction, but I'm the worst at trying to go pick up a girl. I'm really bad at breaking the ice. It's awkward!
Trying my hand at standup was exciting to me.
I went to a restaurant and sat at the bar and ate by myself. I have my iPad, which is my favorite instrument of all time. I talked to a few people next to me. I'm just trying to be out. It's a little bit scary.
There is nothing more worrisome to ISIS than cooperation between 'the West' and the Muslim world, for it defies the narrative of a clash of civilisations the group is trying to revive.
I try not to picture a reader when I'm writing. It's like trying to make a great table but not picturing anybody sitting at it.
