Songs of different moods are like keys, which help me enter the world of my book's characters.
I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.
I made this film 'The Beach,' which didn't take place in a city, and it didn't really suit me.
In 1952, when I was 15 and living on Governors Island, which was then First Army Headquarters, I encountered the newly-published 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Of course, that book became the iconic anti-establishment novel for my generation.
Indeed, the hype around 'Watchmen' is its curse. If you want to enjoy the comic for what it is, ignore the attributions of literariness and the novelistic pretensions with which some critics have imbued it. This isn't high culture, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's good, juicy pulp fiction with a little nuclear apocalypse thrown in.
A jury of my countrymen, it is true, have found me guilty of the crime of which I stood indicted. For this I entertain not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them.
The thought of making a movie in which the monsters were the good guys was just financial suicide.
I had gone to the bookstore, and while I hadn't bought any books on how to write a screenplay, I'd bought a couple of scripts so I could see how the formatting works. I just needed to know how a Hollywood screenplay looked on the page, which was something I was totally unfamiliar with.
To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.
The novel is a thing of irony and ambiguity. That's at the heart of 'J', a world that has stopped arguing with itself. We have to keep our equilibrium of hate, which is argument. But on the Internet, you find a unanimity of response, and in 'J,' there's a fear of that, that discourse becomes a statement of political or ideological belief.
The media tried to destroy my parents and has taken things completely out of context, but there's not a whole lot you can do in terms of fighting back. You have to hope that it passes, which it always does. But they have to be careful. They didn't necessarily sign up for this.
No one gave a crap that I was the kid from 'Free Willy'. You're not in some wispy fantasyland where everyone's telling you 'yes' all the time, which happens a lot to actors.
In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'
I joined the staff of EMI in Middlesex in 1951, where I worked for a while on radar and guided weapons and later ran a small design laboratory. During this time, I became particularly interested in computers, which were then in their infancy. It was interesting, pioneering work at that time: drums and tape decks had to be designed from scratch.
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.
My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' when I left high school, which has always been very special to me - it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I'm also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions.
I think in London - and I don't wanna offend anybody in America, but this is a real statement - they still have the right approach to making music. In the U.S., people see it as a way to make money; they see it as a means to get out. It's a hustle, which is great - any way you can provide for your family that's legal is fantastic.
My colleagues and I have gone in the footsteps of our predecessors since the very first day we were called by our people to care for their future. We went any place, we looked for any avenue, we made any effort to bring about negotiations between Israel and its neighbors, negotiations without which peace remains an abstract desire.
I wrote the text of the resignation. I cannot say with precision when, but at the most two weeks before. I wrote it in Latin because something so important you do in Latin. Furthermore, Latin is a language in which I know well how to write in a more appropriate way.
When I went back to New Hampshire after graduating from law school, my plan was to go work for a private firm because I had to pay some student loans off and make money and really just be in the private practice of law. Which can be very rewarding.
I took inspiration from 'Fountainhead,' the way in which Ayn Rand conveyed her political philosophy through an immensely popular novel.
I did this film with Russell Crowe called 'The Water Diviner,' which took place just after WWI. It was fascinating because the weapons between WWI and WII were very different. I had to learn how to ride horses in a battle setting. It was important that we rode a certain way.
The English National Opera does have some terrific productions, which are accessible, and they're not too ridiculously expensive.
I'm from Cleveland, Ohio, which has one of the largest Jewish populations in a single district in the state of Ohio and almost anyplace else in the United States.
Lately Fish and I have been hooking up more, which is a good thing because it's just been a struggle for me as a bass player to play with someone who's so creative on the drums, and lately it's been really good, especially during sound checks.
I'm always an advocate of 'acting is reacting,' which can be difficult.
The Natural Law which God has written into our beings cannot be entirely eradicated, but it can be gravely deformed, leading to distortion of consciousness and conscience, and hence our actions.
One of the most unsettling things about 'Monologue' is its long silences, in which the man sits alone, staring into the middle distance, without grip of his narrative, lost to the past.
There's branches of science which I don't understand; for example, physics. It could be said, I suppose, that I have faith that physicists understand it better than I do.
Piano is one of those instruments you don't have to be good at to sound good - you just have to know where to put three little fingers, which is really pretty easy to figure out.
There was a time when I was offered two episodes of 'Alias,' that show with Jennifer Garner which J.J. Abrams did back before he became the mega producer and super successful director. I instead decided I wanted to play this family guy on a short-lived UPN 'Second Time Around.' It starred Boris Kodjoe and Nicole Ari Parker.
While Person A might believe the kitchen counter provides a reasonable surface on which to place one's balled-up sweatsocks post-gym, Person B - about to cut up some vegetables on that same counter, perhaps for a meal intended to be shared with Person A - can only read the sockball as a message that says, 'Hi! I have contempt for you!'
What we're concerned about is massive immigration of unskilled workers, mostly from the Maghreb and Africa, which pulls down salaries in France.
The world is fortunate - for the time being, at least - that it has an American president in Obama who is prepared to take a conciliatory and concessive attitude towards America's decline and that it has a Chinese leadership which has been extremely cautious about expressing an opinion, let alone flexing its muscles.