Nothing would have shocked Proust more than to hear that his work was perceived as difficult or inaccessibly rarefied.
My dream role would be to act with Denzel again!
My goal was to have a company off the ground by the time I graduated. But the worst-case scenario was I would have an MBA and a lot of opportunities ahead of me.
I think I would love a shot at remaking 'The Philadelphia Story,' as daunting as it is. I still think it's fantastic. I love the '30s comedies because they're allowed to be both comic and elegant, and the women are so complicated in them.
What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I'll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.
That's the thing about Lionsgate. They are fearless. No other studio would have made 'Hunger Games' the way they did. They're being fearless in the way they make decisions, and it's paying off for them.
When I was really young, I was convinced I wanted to be a visual artist. I would paint and draw and make crafts.
What upset me the most was not that I would die, but that I was letting down my parents. I felt very guilty for chasing this dream career of mine, at the expense of my parents.
I have learned not to overlook the advantages of being me. From when I was a softball player, and I held the stolen bases record. I would slide into second with my prostheses, and the girl on the base could either step aside or meet two wooden sticks.
I would never, ever trade any campaign donation - that's absurd - for some type of favor to anyone.
My first airplane trip was to Paris. I had this fantasy that I would become a model, and I did!
When I was living in the projects, I had a mop stick for my horse. I wanted to be Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, so I would ride my mop through the projects.
I came to the United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I'd become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia. So I wanted to play bad guys.
Express yourself. Tell us who you are. If you would never wear pearls in real life, don't wear them when you get married.
The handwriting is on the wall: if you want to have your franchises viable, then you can't have a situation where New York and Chicago and Los Angeles are doing very, very well, and some other teams are, but, I would say, a significant percentage of the teams in our league are struggling financially.
I think, if I had a dad, I would have went the normal college route. I'm so stoked my life panned out how it was.
How could I have been a wife, a mother and a singer? Who takes care of the piccolini when you go around the world? Your children would not call you 'Mama,' but 'Renata.'
I would watch films like 'Frances Ha' and 'The Squid and the Whale,' and wonder why we weren't making these beautiful slice-of-life movies. Then I thought, 'Why am I not doing it?'
I'm a voyeur. I say that with no embarrassment. If I could have a superpower, being invisible would be it, no question. I'm fascinated by human behavior; observing people and seeing how much story gets told without a lot of dialogue, and how much our brain fills in.
If you tell people, 'that old banger of yours, we're going to tax the hell out of it,' they'll rightly tell you to get lost. But if you tell people that when they next buy a car, the tax will be adjusted so that the cleanest ones will cost less and the polluting ones will cost more, most people would say 'fair enough.'
Baseball and the players association have rules. If you stay within the rules - which say that you can play while you're appealing - I don't see what anyone would be in arms about.
My wife even thinks our next album should be recorded in our house, and we should move all the furniture out to the garage. I'm not sure how many spouses would be supportive of that, much less come up with the idea.
I think no one would dispute that 'Chopped' is a highly athletic television show.
When I first came over to the States, I started writing, I think, as a way to help myself learn English. I would start stapling together little booklets for myself.
All I wanted was to be a regional-theater actor, to be in a company. I thought it would be a great life. I don't think I understood how difficult it would be.
Whatever China I'd been born into, I would probably still have become a painter - I loved sketching portraits as a child, and began art classes at the age 7. But if China hadn't been under Maoist rule, I might never have become a writer.
I don't care about the size of the roles, or how they're marketed or billed or anything like that. I would love to be a part of stories that tell us about where we've come from, where we are, where we're going - with great directors.
I have never been satisfied with a piece of work I have been actively involved in, and would never want to be.
My fear is dying badly, through illness or injury. But what a glorious demise it would be to burn up in space.
What's cool about the beatboxing is I was so afraid to sing in front of my peers, my parents, anybody. I just wouldn't do it. So in sixth grade, I would turn to beatboxing because it made me feel better. Like, I can beatbox 'Drop It Like It's Hot.' Doing that a bunch of times eventually gave me the confidence to sing in front of people.
I would be lying if I said no. I have an idea for 'Pa. Pandi 2', but I don't know when it will happen or if it will happen at all.
I don't think I understood guitar rock as well as I probably should have. I don't think I understood bands like Led Zeppelin. In their era, everyone had such a regard for them because of them ushering in rock n' roll and this larger-than-life lifestyle. But then they had these songs that would just not stop. I didn't fully get it.
There's no one else I would rather have as my manager than my mom because I know that she has our best interests at heart. Sometimes, it's hard to separate manager mode from mom mode. I think as our manager, my mom will get more emotional about situations than she would if she was just our manager.
Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words.
If I could create a world where people lived forever, or at the very least a few billion years, I would do so. I don't think humanity will always be stuck in the awkward stage we now occupy, when we are smart enough to create enormous problems for ourselves, but not quite smart enough to solve them.
I just don't believe in abortion, period. But I would never take away a woman's right to choose what's good for her body. But I still believe that when you do have an abortion, still inside, you go through a lot of stuff. It tears away at your spirit and your soul. So I don't think people think about that.
