Balance in life is the key, as Aristotle taught us. Nobody likes a naive Pollyanna, but neither do we like to be around people who are constantly complaining and finding fault.
Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.
By the time I was in my teens, I was reading science fiction. I had this maternal uncle who had cartons of books. It's important to read because you have to fill your head with words.
Any parent who tells their kids that they can't attend a school play or go to a soccer match because they have to work is kidding themselves. It's OK to miss a game or two or a performance here and there, but it's not all right to miss the majority of them.
U.S. failures when it comes to the Gulf of Guinea are many: a failure to address the longstanding concerns of a government watchdog agency, a failure to effectively combat piracy despite an outlay of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, and a failure to confront corrupt African leaders who enable piracy in the first place.
You may not be like everyone else, but that's okay. Be who God made you to be.
The man who sows wrong thoughts and deeds and prays that God will bless him is in the position of a farmer who, having sown tares, asks God to bring forth for him a harvest of wheat.
When leaders are no longer beholden to the people who elected them, corruption results and the recruitment of extremists becomes easier.
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.
One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a 'binge' writer - like a binge drinker. I go on binges.
It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.
I can't talk to a man who bears an undeserved animosity towards ferrets.
It's funny, I'd rather be known as a writer who crafted a really nice piece about women's friendships over time. But that doesn't roll off the tongue like 'YouTube sensation.'
Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
Fame comes with its own standard. A guy who twitches his lips is just another guy with a lip twitch - unless he's Humphrey Bogart.
I know that elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets.
No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way is without enemies.
We did the original 'Stargate' as an independent movie. It was a surprise success. Shortly before the movie came out, the financiers who were frightened the movie might not do well sold the film to MGM. When the film came out, it was a hit and spawned TV shows.
I don't appreciate a preacher who commits adultery and then goes out and blames me.
'Solomon Creed' is a man who knows everything about everything but nothing about himself and is on a journey of redemption to try and reclaim his identity.
The best models in the industry are the ones who feel comfortable on the set. If she doesn't feel comfortable, the images won't be beautiful.
My goal is to be able to fill out one of those forms that asks 'Who are you?' and be able to just put 'Human being,' you know?
This is what I would say to my pupil: 'You have become only your fame and left behind most of who you were. How are you going to deal with that? Will you lose that person forever? Have you become someone else without really knowing it? Do you always have to stay in character for people to like you? Do you know that you are in character?'.
I'm married to a dear little girl who holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Healthy people are invalids who don't know it.
I like to do little obsessed losers, or people who are in over their head, or people who are trying to figure stuff out, or guys whose girlfriends leave them and they don't quite get it. Guys who just don't quite get it.
Personally I have never found the practice of recreational drug use appealing. In fact, I have always found the lifestyle and the people who surround it to be abhorrent.
If a man, for private profit, tears at the public news, does so with the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get, it is against the national interest.
I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?'
A child who has overcome challenges with proper emotional support will emerge stronger.
Bananas are great, as I believe them to be the only known cure for existential dread. Also, Mother Teresa said that in India, a woman dying in the street will share her banana with anyone who needs it, whereas in America, people amass and hoard as many bananas as they can to sell for an exorbitant profit. So half of them go bad, anyway.
There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care a straw who gets the credit for it.
People who bet against the Internet, who think that somehow this change is just a generational shift, miss that it is a fundamental reorganizing of the power of the end user. The Internet brings tremendous tools to the end user, and that end user is going to use them.
What we're supposed to do as actors is be able to portray real human beings and emotions. And if you grow up in this bubble of showbiz and you only know people who make movies, you don't really have an understanding of the world outside.
As a dancer, one of my many teachers along the way made the comment that who I was onstage and who I was off were two totally different people.
