Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
President Obama inherited a broken country mired in two wars, a financial crisis, a mortgage mess and more than we all probably even know about and has in my opinion brought us back from the brink. But I still see my friends in no better shape and the gap widening.
I am happy that I ran the half-marathon, but to me, just running and saying that I finished a race isn't enough for me. I want to run the race as best as I can. Working out for pants size isn't enough. I need a goal or a race to get back on the treadmill every day.
Honestly, I'm cool with everyone, and people pick up on that. I'd say, 'I'm not gay, but it's all good.' It's kind of like going to Paris when you don't know the language; some Americans get into trouble over there, but I'm just like, 'Sorry, I don't speak French.'
We've made so much headway with storytelling - mostly on cable, let's be honest - but also on the networks and, you know, I think it's about time that the leads are women. I'm not a woman, so I'm a bit biased - I wouldn't mind if a few roles were left over for men.
People who grew up in New York City or Los Angeles tend not to even understand what goes on in the rest of the country. I'm really glad to have grown up in an environment where I actually was kind of a weirdo because I was obsessed with comedy and movies and stuff.
It's just one of those things like when you're not supposed to laugh, it makes it that much harder to stop laughing. And for some reason Zach [ Galifianakis] and I get in this feedback mood of giggling, and on the set of Hangover we just couldn't get through stuff.
I'm trying to buy a house and set some sense of roots because otherwise you're constantly chasing one job after another, and you look back and you've had all these very extraordinary experiences with extraordinary people, but there's not a line of continuity to it.
I'm acting for the same reasons I wanted to become a diplomat. I've thought about it a lot and concluded that I wanted to become a diplomat because it was a way to explore human nature. For the same reason that at one point in college, I wanted to be a sociologist.
Bodhisattva is enlightened in the Buddhist philosophy, religion, tradition. He's enlightened. It's fine - I don't really fight it - but many people use the term 'zen' and terms like 'nirvana,' 'enlightenment' in an almost superficial way. It's not that complicated.
I think, for an actor, the whole world is a place of work because if you focus on characters and on stories, they are everywhere, so yeah, I feel very privileged to have had this great opportunities in the international cinema and especially in the American cinema.
There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems.
I think violence, cynicism, brutality and fashion are the staples of our diet. I think in the grand history of story-telling, going back to people sitting around fires, the dark side of human nature has always been very important. Movies are part of that tradition.
One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that I'm a comedian, which I'm not. A comedian is someone who can stand up in front of an audience and make you laugh. I've never done stand-up and I never will. I'm a comic actor. My comedy comes through my characters.
My mom is from Venezuela, and my dad is German and Japanese, and we lived in Brazil when I was a kid for a couple of years, and then I grew up on Long Island. I think all the traveling and all the nationalities put that stuff in my head. I was just around it a lot.
I think you kind of hope for people gush over movies, but I think the opposite is great sometimes, too. I'd rather have a movie that you're angry about and that you're talking about the next day, than something you forget about when the popcorn goes into the trash.
The big catalyst was seeing my sister, when I was 11, doing a dramatic recital. When I saw her on the stage and everyone listening to her so patiently, quietly, that's all I wanted: for someone to look at me and listen to me, but in some beautiful and artistic way.
The show originally started out as a ten hour mini-series. We shot two hours and then were excused for a while, for no apparent reason. Things went very quiet for a time and then a few months later we were called back and told that it was going to be a full season.
As a stand up, and often in acting, there is no place for the most intense feelings. Rage, genuine sorrow, naked hope... These things don't fit on a comedy stage and if you act you'll get to express them once in a while. Music is a place for the intensely personal.
The moment your kid's born you realize no one knows anything. No one goes to classes. You just have a kid. You can read all the books you like, but unfortunately none of our kids have read the books so they don't care. You're basically making it up as you go along.
When I look at my body of work, I've played a lot of characters who are morally conflicted - 'I'm right, no I'm wrong, I don't know what to do!' I want to play more characters who don't care as much, and who aren't as measured. They are what they are, no apologies.
Improv relies just as much on listening as it does you delivering dialogue. That's the hard for some people. Some people just concentrate on what they're going to say, and they're not listening. You have to listen in order to see where the other person is going to.
I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being.
It's important to have a fallback and other activities that keep you interested. I started acting when I was about nine or 10 years old. My father was a midtown firefighter so I always wanted to be a firefighter, but then acting came along. I have to have a plan B.
Intense asana practice - too much, too soon - can have detrimental effects. It can also promote a dissociation from the personal sensitivity and self awareness that I am trying to encourage. I don't want to contribute to furthering physical or psychological trauma.
Girls didn't really take much interest in me until I was about 14. But I knew how to talk to them very quickly. What I figured out - that my friends didn't - was you have to talk to women like you're not constantly trying to have sex with them. That seemed to work.
Marriage is an ongoing thing, man. You continue to work at it. But it's joyful. And joyous. I don't care if people are living without a marriage certificate. It's just about people, in some way, saying to each other, 'I commit to you. I will help you in this life.'
I'm reluctant to get involved in science fiction, because I feel like I've done it and done it well, so unless something comes along that I feel has the potential to do something even more interesting, it seems a shame to sort of re-live something in half-measures.
I'd like to say I'm R&B's savior. Whether that's the truth or not, I'm definitely going out there with my mic and my shield to declare, 'I am here to save R&B.' I will have the people saying, 'Sir, there is a man at the musical gates saying he is here to save R&B.'
Making an independent film is so great because you're your boss. And you have to be disciplined. You know? Because there's nobody telling you anything. But you have to kinda, you know, if you have an instinct to do something, you do it. There's nobody to run it by.
Women are so - maybe this is just a male perspective, but for my money, they're so connected to life in a way that men aren't. They're able to give birth, have children, and it's literally a part of them. They perhaps have a stronger capacity for caring than males.
I loved Hank Kingsley. He was very real to me. There was just something about that character. I really believed him. I didn't think he was a buffoon. I understood the inner workings of him, so I sort of felt sorry for him, the poor guy. He was very important to me.
I had to do a lot of work and allow myself to go places that were a little scary. You know when you play a guy like that it allows you the freedom to explore really weird parts about you. And it's OK. In order to really get it, I've got to allow myself to go there.
On a film set, there are runners who are 19, it's their first job, but to me they're as important as anybody else because if they don't do their job then nobody else can. So I don't think anybody should be treated disrespectfully or as if they're of a lower status.
You know, I did start a Twitter account, but that's the only thing I do. I feel torn because I don't want to promo myself and force that down people's throats, but on the other hand, that's a component. There's some real interest in, "Hey, what are you doing next?"
Poe had this curious kind of alchemical courage, where he took all the terrible things and terrors that happened in his life, all this shame and fear and pain, and turned them into great works of art. He was a complex, brilliant person who was just wired too tight.
I was never a fanatical movie person. There are many popular films I absolutely love like anyone else. Having said that, I don't have time to go to the movies very much. I work a lot of different things, I'm always busy. But I'm always happy to see a popular movie.
'Indiana Jones' wasn't physically tough, but they are the only two films I've ever been ill on. On 'The Last Crusade,' I got sciatica. That's when the sciatic nerve, which goes through the funny hole in your pelvis down your leg, swells and rubs against the nerves.
It's such a funny thing when you see your daughter transitioning from your baby, your little girl, to suddenly being a young woman. If you're not really looking for it, you can miss it, and Lily-Rose is on that road already, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
Sometimes animal exercises can help you get in touch with parts of yourself that you don't access day to day. In my day-to-day physicality, I'm a little bit like a terrier. I've always been described as a dog. I'm kind of goofy and a little dopey looking sometimes.
Everything was very specific and very fitted. I can't tell you what we went through for this job in regards to full body scans and the prosthetic process that you go through and all that kind of stuff, but everything was done very specifically to fit you perfectly.
If somebody feels a certain way about me and I feel like they're misunderstanding me, I don't need to explain myself. I just try to shy away from it and just pretend like it never happened, and try to rekindle the friendship and let him know that its not like that.
I carry a lot of feminine energy as well as masculine energy, and that's the hit that people are getting. That vulnerable thing is not what we assume with black males. You get it, and then they cease to become scary. They become human. You cease to have a bogeyman.
I had no idea what it took to be an actor. Then all of a sudden I found myself cast in a TV drama. The director was very harsh with me. One time, he told me this would be my first and last acting job. I seriously thought that acting was not the right career for me.
As I walk around, I have met 70-year-old women who live on the Upper West Side who love the show. And I met a couple in Kansas - a couple of truck drivers who drove around together - who loved it. It's popular all over the place and definitely in the gay community.
[Success] always starts with the material; it always starts with the truth and honesty of the characters that you read in the screenplay and that's rarely something that can be remedied if it's simply not there by the time you shoot the film. Thank God we had that.
I don't watch anything of mine much. I haven't gone to drama school, or college, either. I just like to watch other actors in action. I learned so much from working with De Niro. I'd be in a scene with him where I was supposed to be acting, and I was just watching.
Because I've always aspired to direct and produce, I've literally worked with about 200 directors and countless producers, so what I appreciate is how, through osmosis and through actually asking questions and through people offering wisdom, there's a lot in there.
When you have to worry about paying the rent, you're never bored. You're just happy to have that job. But once you don't have to worry and reach the point where it's no longer about the money, you're able to look at other opportunities outside of your comfort zone.
I have a lot of appreciation for what people do in front of the camera as well as behind the camera. I don't think I could like one without the other. Eventually, I think the road will lead me down to producing or directing, because it's more about problem solving.
Every character lives in ever actor and if you're doing your job right, you're just accessing that part of your fantasy life. I can kill someone just as quickly as I can have sex with someone. You can switch that instinct, no matter what - you can pretend anything.