Sometimes I hate writing songs. Because it hurts sometimes. I'm very emotional.
People who know your work and know your personality, they know your strengths and weaknesses. A director like Guillermo del Toro, he knows more about me than I do. I trust him when he tells me what part I'm going to be playing in something, because he's envisioned that that can only be done by me. He knows it.
The lyrics are what I work on the hardest, but I'm not trying to make a perfectly clear message or anything like that. In fact, I'm usually trying to avoid saying something too directly, because usually that rings false anyway.
I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track.
If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.
It's a fun job, but it's stressful because you have to be funny. You have to have punch lines and captions. Be funny now! And if you're not inspired, they don't care - be funny now! They have to fill that hole the next day.
When my grandchildren are older and my great-grandchildren start growing up, first of all, I want them to be in Israel. I don't want them to leave the country because they have no choice.
When we were doing 'Sports Night' and 'West Wing' at the same time, I thought I was the luckiest guy in the world because my two interests were politics and sports.
The only reason I wound up in Nashville and went to Belmont University is because that's where I needed to be.
I wrote a novel, Ghost Road Rules, and as soon as it was done and polished, I began reaching out to agents. I ignored the frequent advice to 'shoot low and try for a low-level agent because they're the only ones that will take a flyer on a new author.' That sounded like bad advice to me.
It's a funny thing, but it's often overlooked that I'm a huge devout lover of French cooking. I have the utmost respect for them, though they have lost their respect for me because they think the way I cook is nutty.
If you actually do cold readings, it's very close to how people actually talk, because you're experiencing these thoughts anew every moment, and trying to make them come out coherently.
I saw my mother crying for the first time, which made a huge impression on me, when I came home from kindergarten, and she was watching TV because JFK - that Irish Catholic president that we loved - had been killed.
Pre-preproduction is the tenuous time before a project is greenlit; before the studio commits to spending real money. This is the most vulnerable period for any film because it's the time when your project is most likely to be put into turnaround. That's film-speak for killed off.
The Lusitania is a monument to this optimism, to the hubris of the era. I love that, because where there is hubris, there is tragedy.
I say the Islanders were the best team I ever covered because they had more so many stars who delivered with Canadian-Swedish-suburban modesty. And they won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980 through 1983.
There is a part of my generation that is not on social media because they have happy lives and they're not trying to connect with anybody. And there are other people who are on social media because they need to connect.
I didn't ever feel close to my real family. I didn't feel validated; I never felt right because I was always wrong.
Don't Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
Reading an audio book is a very odd experience because there are three people sitting out there while you're reading in this glass booth, and you can see their reactions.
We developed a system in Romania that was very successfully continued for a number of years, but I don't know if it was because of some conflict in the organisation or whether there was government interference... but somehow, they have forgotten the importance of raising gymnasts to be ready for every Olympics.
The day Obama got into office, rap was less important because Obama gave kids an alternative. But will rap ever go away? No. There will always be a need for poets.
When I went to drama school, I thought that everybody would think I was only there because my dad was on TV.
Jason Lee made me laugh all the time because he's so big, and I love how goofy bodies can be.
I started out doing triathlons because they terrified me! I'm a good swimmer, I learned to ride a bike in college, and I hate running. It seemed like something I could never do, so I decided, 'I'm gonna do it.'
I believe young people from working families should have access to debt-free education because I know from my own experience that a high-school degree is not always enough, and a higher education can change a life.
There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it.
Because Jews were kicked out of every country in Europe at one time or another, and plenty of other places as well, there isn't an ability to identify with a national heritage - you'll never hear a Jew say 'I'm German' or 'I'm Polish,' without saying something about being Jewish as well, and for good reason.
I was so nervous because I was doing my first film. I didn't want to embarrass myself. I'm an incredibly insecure person, and knowing that I had to go on set in next to nothing, it scared me, but at the same time, I knew it would be a challenge to open me up, not only as an actress but as a person.
I've tried several diets over the past couple of years - not because I need to lose weight, but because my pants are trying to cut me in two.
Stage is so important because it teaches me how to convey character with words - how to convey how a character reacts by the way they appear on stage. I can usually tell a playwright from someone who has never written for the stage. Did the character work? Did the dialogue reveal who the character is?
Omega-3 fatty acids are essential nutrients that we must get from our diets because our bodies cannot make them; they are crucial for early brain development, and there is much evidence that they promote cardiovascular health and cognitive function.
I wrote 'The Zombie Survival Guide' because I wanted to read it, and nobody else was writing it. All I've been doing with everything I've written is answering questions that I had.
Kevin Costner told me that 'True' was his and his wife's song. I'm not sure if that's a good thing because they split up soon after.
The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.
We have nine ships and in the next two years will have ten, eleven and twelve. So things are going very nicely and all because of that program that people thought was mindless and so forth.
