We live in a world of communication - everyone gets information about everyone else. There is universal comparison and you don't just compare yourself with the people next door, you compare yourself to people all over the world and with what is being presented as the decent, proper and dignified life. It's the crime of humiliation.
The younger generation watches what's interesting, not whether it's presented by someone who is as old as I am or someone who is as old as a 21-year-old. It's the material. If I did a series of conversations on things most interesting to Millennials, they would respond to it, and I do.
I look at myself more as a storyteller than a screenwriter, as pretentious as that may sound, but that's what really attracts me to TED Talks. For me, the really effective ones are being presented by expert storytellers.
The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.
'Jane the Virgin' is one of the most original shows that's been presented in the United States.
I started out a die-hard New Yorker but really grew to love working in Los Angeles. Even though I originally wanted to do theater, TV presented more opportunities for me, which led me out west.
From the beginning, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has presented very difficult challenges.
I didn't want the Ramones being told what to be doing, and I wanted the Ramones being presented in the right light - the remaining Ramones.
When I started writing the music, I wanted everything to be consistent from the way I dressed to the way I presented myself online. I wanted everything to match what I was doing on stage.
Architecture and building is about how you get around the obstacles that are presented to you. That sometimes determines how successful you'll be: How good are you at going around obstacles?
All writers, in all viewpoints, must choose which information and scenes will be presented, and in which order. In that sense, the author is always represented as a point of view in a work of fiction. His hand can always be detected by the discerning.
We are presented with a unique situation in the black community in that we have embraced the beauty of hip hop, the real rawness of it, the real fun of it, but we also have to address the damage it has done. We have to look at what it's done to our black girls, especially when it comes to domestic violence.
One of the biggest turnoffs is being presented with an idea that's already, to a degree, complete. That's not an adventure, and it's not a learning experience. It's more of a chore. Then you become a technician with taste, as opposed to an explorer and an author.
I have been presented with roles with demand not just a physical ability but mental disciplines as well. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' was not so much about physical exertion... it was much more graceful and contained than that.
What I like and find liberating in dialogue comedy is that the characters, and what they say, are not me. These are fleeting thoughts and observations and not presented as truths but as something that illuminates the character and the dynamic between the characters. This kind of dialogue is thesis and antithesis - and we never get to a synthesis.
The whole Christmas story was probably a later addition to the gospel narratives, presented only by the authors of Matthew and Luke. Mark and John seem never to have heard of the manger in Bethlehem, the Massacre of the Innocents, the hovering star, the three wise men, and so forth.
For me, comedy is constantly presented as this fake casualness, like a guy just walked on stage going, 'This crazy thing happened to me the other day.' And he's in front of 3000 people, and he's acting like an everyman, and he's getting paid so much money.
Almost nothing is presented to you on a silver platter. You have to really work for it.
John Conyers' office has been very responsive to citizen concerns and the Internet has presented a way to communicate with them in a way that's never before been there.
The President then proceeded to read his Emancipation Proclamation, making remarks on the several parts as he went on, and showing that he had fully considered the whole subject, in all lights under which it had been presented to him.
With food, you're the artist; you put the colour in it, you present it to the table and it has the ability to knock out the senses. It can look fabulous, be beautifully presented and smell great and taste good as well.
I try to always stretch myself to fit the characters that have been presented.
Even as I was writing 'Empire State,' I knew there were more adventures for the main character, private detective Rad Bradley, to have. I also knew that the world was far larger than what I'd presented in book one.
I don't think we should label budgets even before the budget is presented.
If the world is presented as resources to be exploited, then, more than likely, you're going to exploit the world.
I rarely find that things put in quotes, attributed to me, are things that I said -certainly in the context in which they are presented.
