Storylines are how characters create the plots involved in their stories.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
I've always felt I want to be of service to the world somehow. I haven't yet figured out how to do it, and I may never figure out how to do it.
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Nobody's going to tell me how to be different, so stop asking me. Stop asking me what two-plus-two is. Everybody knows two-plus-two is five.
A man's ability to haggle is never a turn-on. The only thing less romantic than how much you paid is how much you saved. The last thing we want to hear is how you talked the jeweler down on our new earrings.
When I think of the things that I want to write, I can never say them out loud because I know how crazy they sound. I know what things sound like when you haven't actually worked on the script, so I don't go around saying some of these ideas because they just sound awful.
Those who know me would say I'm a passionate and hard-working mom and a community leader who knows how to get things done.
'Hill St.' was very good, but it was very impersonal work for me. I wrote about that place as if I was a visitor. It wasn't what my life was like. It was a great place to learn the craft of how to shape a scene, but I wanted a chance to write about more personal themes and obsessions.
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
Capitol Records were very keen for me to write and see how I got on; I think that is what defined my sound. The first session I had was with two young up-and-coming writers, Nick Atkinson and Tom Wilding, and I went into a session a bit nervous because I hadn't written that many songs before.
CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report mostly that America is wrong and bad.
I'm not asking myself, 'How I can be different from Netanyahu?' because I am different, and Kadima is different from Likud, by its own nature.
I suppose it's amazing when you think how many things people get involved in that don't work.
Money and prices and markets don't give us exact information about how much our suburbs, freeways, and spandex cost. Instead, everything else is giving us accurate information: our beleaguered air and watersheds, our overworked soils, our decimated inner cities. All of these provide information our prices should be giving us but do not.
Get to know your kids' minds and how they think.
That's how you live. You participate. You take risks.
Before becoming a mom, I never knew how good I had it to just spend time at a spa for a few hours. Now, those days are far and between. So when I have an hour, it's all about the mani and pedi.
I find talking about acting very boring, having to come out with platitudes about how terribly nice everyone is. I would much rather just do it.
That was devastating to me: how a bright, energetic kid could turn doomed and desperate.
I collect art, and I drink wine... things that I like that I had never been exposed to. But I never said, 'I'm going to buy art to impress this crowd.' That's just ridiculous to me. I don't live my life like that, because how could you be happy with yourself?
Young people know how important it is for dads to be involved in their lives. As I travel the country and talk with students, some of them tell me that their lives would be totally different if their father was around.
When my career first began, I didn't have children - so there's a whole lot of difference in the way I choose roles now. Not just films for my children, but how long I'm going to be away, and is Dad going to be home while I'm gone. That sort-of factor plays a part.
A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.
I am more mature now and know how to deal with certain situations in football. It's not all about highs; there are also lows, but I can deal with it. Football is a hard business.
In life, usually, even if you live in a big city, you can count on your fingers on one hand how many real friends you have; that's human.
I think a lot of things will be self-correcting, even in America. After all, human societies are essentially self-organizing emergent systems. The catch is, how much disorder will we have to endure while this re-self-organizing process occurs.
But it is strange how many rational beings believe the ultimate truths of the universe to be reducible to patterns on a blackboard.
Telling your story out loud is the way human beings communicate. We don't normally think up words, translate how to spell them and then move our fingers up and down over this randomly arranged set of keys to make the same letters appear on a screen.
As someone who has owned a small business in the past, I understand how difficult it can be to get a loan.
Well, I was passionately curious about what my body was doing, and when I got the lessons on how to meditate, it seemed really solid to me. It seemed real.
If Jesus was a Jew, how come he has a Mexican first name?
Dysfunctional co-dependent relationships always appeal to me. I don't know exactly how it started. I start writing sketches of characters and little scene-lets, and then it builds.
My competition keeps me driven. My family and son and being home in Chicago keeps me humble, and my fans. They're the reason why I'm going hard and making sure everyone knows how to say my name.
Television allows for survival, which is the basic issue for me. You have to decide how much money is enough. You can't get carried away with the hunt for money. But there are times it shows up, and you need to grab it, and that allows you to hunt for a better script.
The bracelet says 'Fear Nothing.' It was given to me by my friends, and it was made for me and my friends during the period of time that I was going through chemotherapy. And I still wear it, because it's a great reminder of friendship and how my buddies and others came together in my time of need.
