Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm very involved in FIU. I'm class of '96 and my wife is class of '97. I'm a member of the foundation board. We talk about where the university is strategically and the evolution of programs for the near and distant future.
I called my mother up and I said, 'You know, I've been to the best doctors in the world and I've spent almost half a million dollars and they're telling me I have symptoms of a P.O.W. and all I did was grow up in your home.'
I'm a poor kid from the streets. What I've been able to achieve has really just been through hard work and not letting anyone tell me that I couldn't do something. I always try to encourage people to just pursue your dreams.
My grandmother was born in 1900, and she would regale me with tales I call 'Little House on the Prairie' tales, but they were tales of segregated and racist America growing up in Alabama and Mississippi, where she came from.
I understand the rock star deal having been one and still going out strapping my guitar on and performing. Now, I probably do 30 or 40 dates a year and I get to relive how I felt at 19 when I played in some really bad bands.
We live in a world of strange priorities, where Kim Kardashian buying a Lamborghini creates international headlines, but children in Niger suffering from drought and children in Britain suffering from leukaemia go unnoticed.
Technology is changing, so the viewership is getting broken up. My kids watch everything downloaded; they have no idea what the numbers or the names of the channels mean, except 'FX makes the show that I see on my computer.'
When people say "What do you want people to get from this movie?" I say, "Well, it depends on what they bring to it." I don't try to decide what people should get from it or why. I don't do a part for those kinds of reasons.
In 2009, Scott Rudin sent me August's [Wilson] original screenplay [Fences] and asked me what I wanted to do with it. He wanted to know if I wanted to act in it, direct it or produce it. I said, "Well, let me read it first."
My first trip abroad was to do a TV version of 'Les Miserables' in France with Anthony Perkins. There I was at 12 acting with the guy from 'Psycho.' My parents were teachers, and it was hard for them to relate to that world.
I worked at this great Toronto bar, Indian Motorcycle. I started off as the grunt. I was the guy who cleaned up the puke and the ashtrays and the garbage. Worked in front from four in the afternoon until four in the morning.
As an actor, you have to believe in the point of view of a director; as a director, you have to be able to express what your point of view is and invite everybody to join you on that journey. So it's always about opening up.
I used to be a chemical-engineering student, but I started studying acting, and I went for a cattle call, up against hundreds of people. They tore me down because I was too tall. They said "How tall are you?" "6'5"." "Next."
I'm always in awe of directors because they're just holding so much stuff in the air. They've got so many decisions that they need to be making and they have to have the complete overall look of what the piece of artwork is.
I think origin stories are a great way to get people reinvested in a story. I mean, we originally accepted 'Star Trek' without knowing anything about Kirk or Spock. All we needed to know was that it took place in the future.
Hollywood people are filled with guilt: white guilt, liberal guilt, money guilt. They feel bad that they're so rich, they feel they don't work that much for all that money - and they don't, for the amount of money they make.
He (Tesla) was 84, and he died in a hotel, completely broke and alone. In love with a pigeon. This is a nightmare. I'm in hell. This is hell. I'm talking about Tesla in my puke. Tesla was the electric Jesus. I can't breathe.
It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy's autograph. I'd tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, 'People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.' But she couldn't really grasp it.
I try to think what the character is thinking. Then, hopefully, I begin to feel it. I act and react not because Im recalling a dog killed by a fire engine, but because Im concentrating on what the character is going through.
People that went to art house theatre have more options, I used to go, but now think any movie can be delivered in a red envelope three months after it's released so why not watch it on my flat screen in the comfort of home.
I just can't imagine that people would stand for it. People are wanting to potentially elect someone who will get our troops out, so at this stage, if the draft was reinstated, I just think that people would have none of it.
In making certain things easier for people, technology has actually demotivated people from using their brains. We have all these devices that keep us connected, and yet we're more disconnected than ever before. Why is that?
My second year of Ryerson, I still lived at my folks' place. I went to the attic to find some prop for a play I was doing. And I found a scrapbook dedicated to my father's years at Ryerson as an actor. He never mentioned it.
I take pleasure in the little things. Double cheeseburgers, those are good, the sky ten minutes before it rains,the moment your laugh turns into a cackle. And I sit here, and smoke my Camel straights, and I ride my own melt.
When you are a rapper, there's always hesitation in taking on certain roles because of creditability, but Rza is one of those guys who doesn't worry about what people will say. He's a talented guy and can dive into anything.
I would suggest maintaining a life and a career outside the Industry. This is a fickle business and a lousy one to make a steady living in, so it's important to have a good family, friends, job and education to fall back on.
I thought for a minute about an actor and a musician simultaneously, but I think that's always very loaded as an actor when you become a "slash," and you do an actor "slash" anything. You better be really, really good at it.
I parody myself every chance I get. I try to make fun of myself and let people know that I'm a human being, and these things that have happened to me are real. I'm not just some cartoon who exists and suddenly doesn't exist.
Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.
I never thought of it as God. I didn't know what to call it. I don't believe in devils, but demons I do because everyone at one time or another has some kind of a demon, even if you call it by another name, that drives them.
I'm so lucky to have been raised the way I have, because my parents believed that everyone had the right to their own feelings, opinions, and existence; as long as they weren't harming others, you had to defend those rights.
It takes an extraordinary toll on me to re-live my experiences, the horrors of my past and the pain I had to endure. And yet, I believe remembering is the only way to promote healing, to promote awareness and accountability.
In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.
When you're a kid, you think, "Well, I will grow up and I will get a wife and we will have kids and then we will have grandkids." My life has a different shape. That is weird, but there are things about it that are exciting.
I bought a house right before the housing crisis happened. So I paid too much and then I was stuck with it for a long time. So that was sad for me. I was like, "I'd better make a movie about this to get it out of my system."
A psychologist said to me, there are only two important questions you have to ask yourself. What do you really feel? And, what do you really want? If you can answer those two, you probably can leave your neuroses behind you.
Chicago still remains a Mecca of the Midwest - people from both coasts are kind of amazed how good life is in Chicago, and what a good culture we've got. You can have a pretty wonderful artistic life and never leave Chicago.
When a director writes, there's a compulsory arbitration. You have a right to challenge any of the arbitrators, but they pick three of four arbitrators who read all the drafts with no names attached and then allocate credit.
Growing up in the States, there's this part of me that's like, man, I'm Indian. Like, this is where I belong. And as soon as I got to India, and I had to go to the bathroom in some places, I was, like, 'Man - I am American.'
I always love working with young actors, because there's always something to learn. It's always exciting to see the next generation and how they approach things and what's great about them and what's not so great about them.
I'm a Jew. Thirty-three is when Christ died. So though I'm a Jew, in the back of my mind I still think that I gotta get it done before I'm thirty-four because well, I don't know why. He got it done before He was thirty-four.
The hats are tough. I've got a weird head, so believe me, there were a lot of hats. Penny [Rose], our costume designer, who I knew from other jobs said, "Badge, that looks terrible on you. Hold on. No, we can't do that one."
You can either hope and pray you don't get picked on, or you can, in a way, almost make yourself a bigger target, because it's harder to bully something that's really big. It's easy to bully something that's small and frail.
The whole Haley-Nathan marriage deal was a pretty good twist huh? I hope we got all of you with it. That particular story line even suprised me when I read it, it's a good one and it'll provide for some good stories to come.
Actually, if I could find a woman who was that wonderful; that understanding, well, I'd give her everything in the world that was in my power to give. And, I'd love her more than I ever thought it possible to love any woman.
When I was younger - up until I was 19 years old and in college - I was surrounded with people in high school who felt like they knew what they wanted to do with their lives, and that was intimidating to me because I didn't.
I think you always want to be open to things... it's just the matter of finding something I believe in, finding a character I believe in, and I think that's the way it should always be. I'm looking for things that excite me.
The idea that I would ever end up on David Letterman or Jay Leno is horrifying. I am such a freak in comparison to most other twenty-five-year-old guys. I have no idea what other people are thinking. I’m not really in touch.
We're gonna try to have the baby a little while before we name it. We don't want to put it out there, like try and turn him into something before we meet the kid. We want to get a feel for who this kid is before we name him.
I like fashion. My mum was a dressmaker, believe it or not, so the consequence of that was that all my clothes were homemade, and I looked like a terrible mess until I was old enough to buy my own. But I love good tailoring.