It's not how pretty you are or how talented you are. It's that if these five people on this day in this room like you, then you get a job.
By giving the leadership to the private sector in a capitalistic society, we're going to measure the value of art by how many products we can sell.
How a piece ends is very important to me. It's the last chance to leave an impression with the reader, the last shot at 'nailing' it. I love to write ending lines; usually, I know them first and write toward them, but if I knew how they came to me, I wouldn't tell.
How can you compare my life to any other MEP? I mean, come on, it's crackers, isn't it? Look, other MEPs do five days a week in Brussels and pop home for weekends. I'm working seven bloody days a week, all the hours God sends. If you include the socialising, it's over 100 hours a week.
I think the process of 'SNL' is still pretty formal. You make an audition tape, your agent sends it in, they watch people's tapes, and then they invite people to perform at a comedy club in Los Angeles or New York. But I don't know how much actual scouting they do online.
I was amazed by how much you have to think about as a director. As an actor, you don't have to think about much at all, as it turns out. It's very easy. And then when you step into the director's role, there's this whole universe of stuff that you have to pay attention to that's amazing to me.
Both 'Consenting Adults' and 'Glengarry Glen Ross' revolve around the economic stresses of the '90s. They are about what people do when they're pushed against that wall, and how they're manipulated. They are both morality tales, though in very different genres.
Long view of history shows evil triumphing more often than we'd like to admit. That's just how it is. I don't despair too much about dying, either. It's just a fact of being human.
Typically, the theme of my albums, if there is a theme, is, 'How does it feel?' And that always leads to love songs. It just does.
In my work at 'Entertainment Weekly,' I had written reviews and news stories about YA books and film franchises and was always moved by how smart and voracious and loyal the readers were. Everything we did got lots of attention and reaction.
Bureaucrats behave very differently than a private-sector manager because their motivations are different. Permanent bureaucrats, no matter how senior, worry about their next job.
People treat you according to your energy or what you put out there, so what I put out there is very open. I'm not paranoid or scared, I'm open. That's how I treat people, with respect and speak truthfully.
Happy and alone, you say? Reclusive and merry? How oxymoronic! Pas possible! Alas, the concept is lost on so many.
Do I believe, for example, that by using magic I could fly? No. How would you get around gravity? Impossible. Do I believe that I might be able to project my consciousness into a very, very vivid simulation of flying? Yeah. Yes, I've done that. Yes, that works.
I don't think Iraq could be transformed overnight into a democracy. How can you take a country that doesn't have any kind of tradition of democracy, where its people have been brutalized and repressed for decades, and suddenly impose Jeffersonian ideals?
My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer's mind-set: Everything's kind of a problem; how do you approach the problem?
What I do, basically, is look at things from different angles. That is what I do on stage comedically, and that is what I do in art. I was always fascinated by the structure of things, why things work this way and not that way. So I like to see how things behave if you change the point of view.
What we're most aware of in 'Eight-Legged Freaks' is how similar it is to other movies, a recombinant mutated species itself, the product of the crossbreeding of the suffering-from-gigantism movies of the 1950s and the 1990 B-picture classic 'Tremors.'
What I find kind of annoying as a woman, especially in this society, is how people like to support people who seem like they're struggling when it comes to artists.
I'm thinking about recording everything to tape like it's 1991 and seeing how that sounds.
Photography, painting or poetry - those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things; they are my way of communicating.
Every day, I wake up and I say, 'Why... how... did I end up with 1.7 million Twitter followers?' It's freaky to me, every day, but that tells me that there's an appetite out there that had previously been underserved. There's an inner geek in us all, an inner bit of curiosity that people are discovering, and they like it.
You know how people always talk about how vision is the key to entrepreneurship and perseverance and really seeing what other people don't see? We can actually redeem a fair amount of that folk wisdom.
Fitness is important, but the most important thing is how you adapt and the way you feel physically. To adapt to a new position. To try to change your game.
It's fascinating to see how versatile New York City is. It lends itself to being so many different places!
I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.
I can't imagine how much time it took Matt Bucy to cut up 'The Wizard of Oz' and reassemble every word of dialog into alphabetical order. The resulting movie is called 'Of Oz the Wizard.'
I'm trying to cut down a little on eating, on sodium, keep my blood pressure down, which is tough. Because I love food! I do, but it's unfair how everything that's bad for you tastes so good, and all the good stuff, veggies and green things, doesn't match up.
There are so many stereotypes of how you have to be as a black man, growing up in the community as a man.
People who have never done theatre before, and have only worked in front of a camera, would find it very difficult, I think, to know how to command a stage and work with the logistics of being on stage. They're very different. The theatre is quite tricky, actually.
I'm coming out with my line of shoes and my very first shoe is called 'The Nethia.' How we came up with the name is that my legal name is Linnethia and we shortened it.
I basically taught myself how to DJ, but I've been inspired by DJs throughout my whole career. I have some good friends that would hook us up with music. You learn some little things here and there from each DJ and you just take it and put your own style into to it.
It's all so confusing and incestuous and curious, the trail that actors wander through in the course of their careers and how stories overlap. It's funny.
I worked at Ruby Foos early on as a host. I was only there for a little bit, but I had several odd jobs to pay the bills before that. And being in New York for the first year, I got here in 2003, and it was a very exciting but very scary time not knowing how you would make ends meet and me trying to meet people.
I think there's a gigantic generation gap in terms of how people understand the Internet and how much they think technology is an important factor in social change.
I can't be sure of exactly when and how North Korea will change. But I do believe it will happen, hopefully in my mother's lifetime.
