I'd love to have a 19th Century Russian book club where all the members had to act like the pretentious minor noblemen they were reading about.
That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people.
Finding someone who's willing to drown with you creates a situation where you no longer want to drown.
Task switching is hard because we do not control what is on our mind. Despite our efforts, the original task continues to occupy our mental bandwidth. Although we can control where our time goes, we cannot fully control how our bandwidth is allocated.
Mental health is an area where people are embarrassed. They don't want to talk about it because somehow they feel they're a failure as a parent or, you know, they're embarrassed for their child or they want to protect their child, lots of very good reasons, but mental health, I feel, is something that you have to talk about.
There's a grace period where being a mess is charming and interesting, and then I think when you hit around 27, it stops being charming and interesting, and it starts being kind of pathological, and you have to find a new way of life. Otherwise, you're going to be in a place where the rest of your peers have been moving on, and you're stuck.
In New Orleans, where I'm from, the average household income, with two working parents, two kids, a dog and a little fence is $16,000 a year, so $15,000 for a movie sounds pretty good.
I came from a tradition where souls were a theological reality, not a faith reality. Souls were for saving, not for communing. Souls were for converting and, once they were converted, they were to be left alone. Souls were too mystical, too subjective, too ambiguous, too risky, too... well, you know - New Age-ish.
I remember a Q&A I did in Wales where there were five people in the auditorium.
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.
Where I would fault President Bush the most was that, in the wake of 9/11, he motivated our military, but he didn't call the nation into a state of war. And he didn't explain that this would take though a communal effort against common foe.
So many of my friends are still trying to get record deals, and I've had one for 10 years now, where my only goal is to make the best music I can make. I've been very lucky. I have great faith that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, and whatever happens is going to be absolutely right for me.
I keep thinking I should get a phone, because everyone's got one and it becomes increasingly difficult to exist in a society where everyone else has moved ahead and you haven't.
I don't want to ever say to somebody, 'You don't have to see it. It's not good.' I'm done with that. I'd love to just do things that I respect. That being said, I do have two children to put through school, so we'll see if I can put my money where my mouth is, but I would love to just work with people I respect.
In essence, what Innocentive does is it provides a platform where you can post a really challenging problem and offer a reward to anybody who can come and provide a solution. And it's been remarkably effective. People get very challenging problems and get solutions to those problems.
