I pretty much left full-time, formal education when I was 11, so that was when I was taken out of the school system... The longest stretch I would go back for was a term and a half when I was about 14.
I'm actually pretty smart when you get to know me.
In early 2008, it was confirmed that there would be an opportunity to build applications for the iPhone. We were fortunate enough to make the right call on that: to bet early, to put resources into it and have a pretty good application in the store at the moment when it opened.
When you do reality, you have to be pretty careful. You have to almost monitor yourself to make sure that you don't get yourself in situations that you shouldn't.
If you can attribute your success entirely to your own mental effort, to your own attitude, to some spiritual essence that you have that is better than other people's, then that must feel pretty good.
Yeah, we pretty much had a form and a shape by that time - a style - and I think one of the advantages of not having any relationship to any other puppeteer was that it gave me a reason to put those together myself for the needs of television.
I've had an incredible life with a lot of triumphs, my share of heartbreak, and some pretty amazing experiences.
I've been talking basketball pretty much my whole life.
My first experience with the creative was mopping tar. If you let the tar sit, it can get cold pretty quickly. And because the mops are so heavy, you've got to dip it and then ride it really fast.
When I was about 12, I had my first paying gig - 8 dollars to play rhythm guitar in a polka band. Pretty soon, I ended up playing in all the bars within driving distance of Abbott, Texas.
My career had been split pretty evenly between good guys and bad guys until I finally grew into myself enough to play a decent antihero, where you can combine the two.
Obviously, the anti-ERA people are tickled about my ordeal because it proves that the ERA breaks up families. When they point out that feminism is a dangerous thing, I just say marriage is pretty precarious too.
My wife, Keisha, came home once, and I had these violinists playing for her, and I'd prepared dinner for her, and I write poems. She's pretty amazing, so I like to celebrate that. She's really taught me how to celebrate life; that's something I've learned.
Between my hatred of mall shopping and my mother's firm ideas about how a girl should dress, my style choices were pretty unenthusiastic: plaid skirts or whatever empire-waisted thingamabob was on sale at Sears.
When tulip mania dies down, all that remains are pretty flowers. When bubbles burst, nothing is left but soapy residue. But the Internet revolution, for all its speculative excesses, really is changing the world.
In my experience, divorce takes you out for about 10 years, but you hear people talk about it lightly. The same with depression. You only have to have one good breakdown before you realize you need help. It's pretty frightening.
A guitar for me is pretty much strictly in the context of writing songs for my band, coming up with ideas with my band, and then being able to perform those songs as best as I can on stage - that's what the guitar for me has always been.
I have plenty of vanity in my life. I want to look pretty in the world. But it can be this bottomless pit.
My favourite performances are by actresses like Bette Davis in 'All About Eve' or Gena Rowlands in pretty much anything - performances that have nothing to do with age.
My band is so dedicated, everybody works very hard. The No. 1 priority is the show, and it's pretty cool because we all pull together, and it's fun. It's like being on a sports team or something.
That aesthetic of the Star Wars universe: the do-it-yourself, hotrod ethic that George Lucas exported from his childhood, is exactly the same kind of soul behind what we do and build for the show. It may not look pretty, but it gets the job done.
The right wing is appealing to a shrinking, shrinking demographic of angry white people who blame their predicament in life on the fact that there are immigrants coming into the country; it's pretty ludicrous.
I'm pretty proud of having completed a marathon myself, so I can only imagine the pride that real athletes feel when they are picked for the Olympic or the Paralympic Games.
I would love to be a sleeper, but I'm not. I'm usually up pretty early, even if I've been out the night before.
One arm might handicap me a little in competition, but I just work with what changes I know I have to make, and I'm pretty used to it now. It mainly depends on the wave conditions... I only get half the waves everyone else rides, so mine have to be good!
I don't know why everybody thinks I'm smooth. I think I'm just a pretty silly person, really.
The competition is pretty rough these days.
I think dissonance in music makes you think. It isn't, 'Oh, that's a pretty melody I can whistle.' You have to sit down and listen to tell it apart from other things.
This whole idea of visibility by the public creates a pretty powerful lever. In the new transparency era, you are able to make change you would otherwise have difficulty making. It's no longer possible for somebody just to bury the problem. It's the reason why things like WikiLeaks are important.
It's pretty funny, just driving by in a cab, and you see a huge billboard of yourself on the side of a hotel, like a 100-by-100 poster hanging up.
In real life, I'm pretty much an eternal optimist.
I'm never standing still and that makes my life pretty exciting.
I'm one of the lucky directors that pretty much every movie I've done has started a franchise. But I never think this way. I think that's the way you break it, if you go, 'then at the end, at the end we'll see you later.' I was forced to do it in 'Clash of the Titans.'
When I watch movies with my kid like 'Shrek,' I'm like, 'Wow, this is pretty funny.' That's why I wanted to start doing movies like that - so my kid would laugh at my jokes.
A lot of women these days, a lot of young women don't want to call themselves feminists. You have this cheap, hideous 'girl power' sort of fad, which I think is pretty benign at best, but at worst, I think it's a way of taking the politics out of feminism and making it some kind of fashion.
I write pretty much year-round, but I definitely do more when a deadline is looming.
