What if we strove for compassion, for mercy, for forgiveness? And what if we did this for everybody, including people who have harmed others?
I wrote a song with Kara DioGuardi called 'What If,' and it's a really beautiful song. It's kind of like a rock ballad. There's a lot of guitars and drums in it.
What if the Soviet intervention was a blessing in disguise? It saved the myth that if the Soviets were not to intervene, there would have been some flowering authentic democratic socialism and so on. I'm a little bit more of a pessimist there. I think that the Soviets - it's a very sad lesson - by their intervention, saved the myth.
If there's an audience, I think they're going to expect me to be funny. But what if I'm not funny? What if I fail?
I'm not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I say, 'Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this?'
I don't think we should speak so much. What if we were singing a song? We split, whilst singing.
What if it's boring - or if it's not boring, it might be too revealing, or worse, it might be too revealing and still be boring.
What if an asteroid were to strike planet Earth? What could we possibly do to prevent it? However many guys we have working on this problem, it can't possibly be enough.
I've come to realize that artists and scientists are alike. They go through the same processes using different tools. They are both driven to answer the question, 'What if?'
As a writer, you always try to imagine, 'What if I were in a situation like this? How would I react?'
I thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer, which I turned out to be. But I was always curious about other things too, and what if I got interested in history or the law?
'2016' is based on an experiment: what if you let Obama do it himself? That experiment is necessarily limited because I'm not factoring in a Republican House, a Supreme Court or the tug of public opinion.
You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work. What if you paid them in the afternoon to work in the clerical office or as the assistant librarian?
What if the slowdown in merger activity isn't cyclical, but secular? What if corporations have learned the lessons of so many companies before them that the odds of a successful merger are no better than 50-50 and probably less? Is it possible that the biggest deals have already been done?
I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.
I used to refer to myself as a 'theoretical anorexic,' just as crazy when it came to body image, but saved by a lack of self-discipline. My daughters do everything better than I do - they're smarter, more beautiful, happier. What if they end up better at anorexia, too?
Every album, I'm worried that I'm a dork and a fraud - 'What if I can't sing anymore?' Then I stop thinking and start playing guitar, and I realize that it's okay to suck, and move forward.
There are two questions that you ask yourself as a writer, and one of them is, 'But why?' The question that takes the book forward is, 'What if? What if x y or z happened? How would those characters react?'
A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential?
I would just randomly blurt out things like, 'What if a man showed up today and was carrying an umbrella, but it wasn't raining?' Eventually, people started to call me weird.
I was always worried with comedy - what if I came to work and I wasn't in a funny mood? That hasn't been an issue.
I always say, 'What if you had to sell the house tomorrow?' And if it's too idiosyncratic, someone won't buy it and then it's a bad house.
I personally battled with my own body image for years. I used to tell myself, You can't wear anything sleeveless or strapless. And all of a sudden I was like, What if I just didn't send such negative messages to my brain and said, wear it and enjoy it? And now I'm more comfortable in clothes than ever.
An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?
The bitcoin protocol is about mining bitcoin, not pricing bitcoin. There is nothing in the protocol about establishing a market price for bitcoin; you need a market for that, but what if all the exchange markets are shut down?
One day, the people who work in my kitchen stir-fried chopped Napa cabbage to serve with some meat or fish for their own dinner. I got to thinking: 'What if the cabbage was the most important thing on the plate?'
Why can't we have a concert with food? Your typical cooking demonstration, there's just no enthusiasm. There's no energy behind it. I said, 'What if we take a cooking demonstration and fortify it with a lot of good music? ... Drive it to the next level?'
Our entire brand is about transparency. We want that data out there because you know what? If you are only getting one in three messages replied to, you're normal. You're right there in the middle of everything with everyone else.
What if God's a woman? Not only am I going to hell - I'll never know why!
Why do the police need to know where I am? In the hands of a benevolent government, they could be looking after your interests, but what if the next government isn't so benevolent?
What if capitalism is unsustainable, and socialism is impossible?
I had grand visions of being in professional sports. But when reality set in, I went, 'Oh, OK. I'll just move to Hollywood and be an actor.' I didn't want to look back on my life and wonder, 'What if I had done this? Or I had done that?'
I am in a traditional financial services business - but we at Fidelity can see that the evolution of technology is setting our industry up for disruption. What if this technology could do for the transfer of value what the Internet did for the transfer of information?
I have no regrets in life, and you know what? If I could, I'd go back and do it all again.
I'm pretty restless in bed, so I can lie there for a couple of hours and be like, 'Hey, that happened today. What if that happened at a zoo?' I'll jot the idea down. Then I'm like, 'All right, so now that it's a zoo, that penguin's loose,' or, whatever. I usually start with broad ideas.
In a storm, I think, 'What if the gospel be not true? Then thou art, of all men, most foolish. For what has thou given up thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life?'