I'd love to drive a Lamborghini, but I think it's hard when the pedals are way down in there, and you sit real low, but I've come up with some pedal extensions. I actually sit in a kids' car seat that my old boss put this beautiful leather wrap around, and it looks just like a Corvette seat that sits on top of my leather Corvette seat.
I never do anything to strictly satisfy a fickle, ever-changing commercial world. I do the music I like to play. It's the only way I feel comfortable existing in the industry.
I should tell you that many people think that authors just cut and paste from real life into books. It doesn't work quite that way.
Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.
I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way.
Small things have a way of overmastering the great. This small press can destroy a kingdom.
What I hated then - and hate now - is the way that people say to girls like me who get pregnant young that it ruins your life. Having a child doesn't ruin your life - having a child is a blessing.
I really challenge every actor at the beginning of a process, and I always say, 'I have an idea that I'm going to bring to the table. I hope and expect that you will have an idea and bring it to the table. But the way I really want to work is that together we're going to have a third idea that is better than either of our ideas.'
Video has become much more social, and as a result, there are many opportunities to use video as a way to connect people, to give them opportunities to play and participate, to make things together and have a shared social experience. I think we are just at the beginning of really exploring what social video is and what we can make of it.
There were times when gangs would approach me, but my father was way stronger than them. They would come make threats and stuff, and I was like, 'You don't know the opposition I've got upstairs. I'm not scared of you.'
Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art.
You know, I'm one of millions of undocumented people in this country who are living kind of under the shadows. And in many ways, coming out, it was my way of - at the end of the day, I think we have to tell the truth about this immigration system. And because of that, I had to tell the truth about myself.
I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.
In a way, I'm always trying to do something I'm not qualified to do. So I feel that lack of qualification. And I'm scared. And I have a tendency to think things may not/probably won't work out. That's my basic mindset.
Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person's life.
When you get as old as I am, you kind of believe there's nothing new under the sun, but there's always a fresh way of looking at something. That's why I love working with young people. They remind you of things you used to know and have since forgotten.
What I do, basically, is look at things from different angles. That is what I do on stage comedically, and that is what I do in art. I was always fascinated by the structure of things, why things work this way and not that way. So I like to see how things behave if you change the point of view.
I will not stand for any tax increase for middle class or working Americans. There is no way I will support that.
I think people assume that because I talk the way that I talk that I grew up with money, and then I've had to say, 'No, I grew up poor.' And then I was like, 'Why do I have to play this game where the only black experience that's authentic is the one where you grew up in poverty?' I mean, it's ridiculous.
Learning lines is on my mind until I do know them. I'll read the paper or paint the house to keep from starting to memorize. I've never found an easy way.
There's no way the writing staff of 'Game of Thrones' haven't read 'The Art of War.' There's definitely an influence on 'Game of Thrones' from this book in both a general way and on the character of Lord Baelish and his strategies.
Photography, painting or poetry - those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things; they are my way of communicating.
After I did 'Brooklyn,' I did about five or six violent films in one way or another, and not always with me being the bad guy, but something violent about it to keep the street cred up, really.
That's one of the problems with Hollywood. It'll say 'policeman,' and an unless it says 'black policeman,' a lot of times you won't even get the opportunity to read for it, which is kind of crazy, but that's the way it is.
Fitness is important, but the most important thing is how you adapt and the way you feel physically. To adapt to a new position. To try to change your game.
Working with someone is the best way to get to know someone, especially if it's a creative endeavor.
I can honestly say, there was a moment when I was writing 'Upstream Color' where I fell so hard for what it was becoming that I couldn't think of anything else. I was absolutely secure in this story in the way I'm rarely secure about anything else in my life.
I grew up in society when lots of things were hidden, and they were not hidden just one way, but it was very complicated.
Trying to make a movie like 'Warcraft,' and trying to do it in a unique way... you get killed by a death of 1,000 cuts.
I found it possible to observe at least the superficial capillaries of muscles both in the frog and in mammals through a binocular microscope, using strong reflected light as a source of illumination. Resting muscles observed in this way are usually quite pale, and the microscope reveals only a few capillaries at fairly regular intervals.
The curious thing about the Ready-Made is that I've never been able to arrive at a definition or explanation that fully satisfies me. There's still magic in the idea, so I'd rather keep it that way than try to be exoteric about it.
When you're overthinking a thought like the way I do, I can get completely pulled away from something I'm in the middle of because my thought channel just won't help me get from point A to point B without any difficulty.
We focus on two things when hiring. First, find the best people you can in the world. And second, let them do their work. Just get out of their way.
I've had way more rejections than I've had jobs.
I say that I suffer from what Rosalind Krauss was calling the post-medium condition, where an artist essentially employs several mediums in order to bring to life whatever specific ideas that they have. For me it's always been that way.
If you can improve your franchise, even if you're doing well, you're going to make that move. You just are - at least I am. It's about winning and winning the right way and trying to sustain success over a large period of time.