I don't enjoy writing newspaper articles any more than people like reading them. I'm a standup comic, not a journalist, although sometimes onstage I will say: 'What else is in the news?' Writing is work, which I'm not comfortable with.
I think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.
For everyone, 'Star Wars' has been a part of their lives in some capacity. I remember watching it very early on with my cousins and my brother, and we were all cuddled around the VHS player, which sounds very old-fashioned, but that was the way then.
During all of my writing career - this includes when I was writing plays and my other screenplays - I don't recall ever writing a negative character, which does not mean that my characters aren't flawed or do not make mistakes. In actual fact, they all are quite flawed.
You can say that I endorse Mitt Romney, but that's not just because I'm a white man. We all have things which we're for and ideas which we support.
I didn't want wrestling anymore; I wanted to not want it. But I couldn't get a job anywhere, which was part of the reason I was homeless. I couldn't get a job pumping gas. I couldn't get a job working at a warehouse, I couldn't get a job at Baskin Robbins, I couldn't get a job anywhere.
I have a Damien Hirst spot painting which I love. It has pride of place over my dining-room table.
I did a lot of freelance desk publishing jobs when I graduated from college. I sort of earned a living doing that while I was writing plays, which was what I wanted to do. My hope was to become a playwright.
Science is based solely on doubt-based, disinterested examination of the natural and physical world. It is entirely independent of personal belief. There is a very important, fundamental concomitant - that is to accept absolutely nothing whatsoever, for which there is no evidence, as having any fundamental validity.
A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don't want to call themselves feminists. You have this cheap, hideous 'girl power' sort of fad, which I think is pretty benign at best, but at worst, I think it's a way of taking the politics out of feminism and making it some kind of fashion.
The last hundred years have been retinal; even the cubists were. The surrealists tried to free themselves, and earlier so had the dadaists, but unfortunately, these latter were nihilists and didn't produce enough to prove their point, which, by the way, they didn't have to prove - according to their theory.
Workplace relations is about getting the best out of people. An argument which says that the only way we can compete with other nations in the world is engaging in a race to the bottom in terms of pay rates, penalty rates, protections on rosters, getting rid of family friendly provisions - that is not Australia's future.
I never have really said much about the whole episode, which was endless. But his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did.
Human need is really a great spiritual vacuum which God seeks to fill... With one hand in the hand of a fellow man in need and the other in the hand of Christ, He could get across the vacuum.
'The Means' is about power. I have access to political insiders who helped me write a portrait of the real day-to-day in politics, which turned out to be crazier than Wall Street.
For those of us who want to accomplish something for the country, we need to come up with a list ... of anti-spending reforms which are locked into place so we are dramatically lowering the appetite of the federal government over the future.
I've been always clear that I wouldn't do TV soaps just for the sake of doing them. I would rather wait and work on projects which enable me to make an impact.
In my career, I've never been a box office name. Granted, a couple of my movies have made a lot of money, but I'd do other movies which make very little money, or they're not seen that much.
I've worked with Len Wiseman before, on the 'Underworld' series, in which I was a vampire. The first two of those were his first two films. And I admire him beyond measure. I think he's tremendous, as a man and as a director.
I'm pleased that some economists and sociologists are beginning to talk about, for example, alternative measures of human well-being - alternative, that is, to GDP, on which the world runs.
The real issue for the public is to figure out which narrative do we want. We can have a bigger government, if that's the public's choice. It'll just require higher taxes on every American. Do you want that, or do you want smaller government, smaller taxes?
Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.
When the calamity we feared is already arrived, or when the expectation of it is so certain as to shut out hope, there seems to be a principle within us by which we look with misanthropic composure on the state to which we are reduced, and the heart sullenly contracts and accommodates itself to what it most abhorred.
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.
I only work once or twice a year for about a month, so I have a lot of free time. But I'm good at being alone, which helps.
Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.
We've always actually been remarkably commercially successful. Not in terms of making huge amounts of money, which we rarely do, but in terms of not losing money and making modest amounts of money. We're actually strangely consistent in that respect.
I lost my mind at 15. I'd been shown a world where there were no boundaries, where everyone gave me all the power. And I was like, 'This is great!' Then that was gone. But I was like, 'Yeah, but I still want that.' I'd lost my humble, very quiet, introverted sensibilities which I think I definitely had as a kid.
There's an amazing documentary, 'The Day After Trinity,' which is crazy good.
I drifted into acting. My grandfather had a house in Buffalo in which there was a stage, and his friends met every two weeks or so to put on plays. So it was natural for me to put on plays, too, when I went to boarding school. I put on everything in the drama - I was indiscriminate. I put on Yeats and Shaw and Lady Gregory.
When I started out, I wanted to be Billy Joel. The plan was to be a singer-songwriter of that ilk, and, then, I got waylaid - that's probably an unfair way to say it - from being a rock star by the musical theatre stuff, which I love doing.
There was no doubt that there was a vast organization which was making fools of all the liberals in Hollywood and taking their money, that there was a police state among the Left element in Hollywood and Broadway.
Hamp would ask me about tempos in the band: 'Jacquet,' he'd say, 'knock off that tempo.' A lot of jazz musicians didn't prefer to play for dancers, which was their loss, really. But good jazz has always had that dance feel.
If you don't like the people, you're just doing a sketch. Which, in most cases, is comedy minus some emotional backbone.
There was always that kind of imagination in our house, which was always a little crazy.
I taught myself how to use a multi-track tape recorder, which was the first time I recorded myself.
