Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've been fortunate enough to match up the material I'm producing with the right buyer, the company that will make it and that wants it, and that isn't saying yes to be nice, but is saying yes because they want and need that movie and it's going to be important on their slate.
I'm perfectly happy to eat organic food, but if I choose to pay more for it, I don't pat myself on the back ethically. Quite the reverse. I think I'm actually being quite greedy, because what I'm doing is essentially saying, 'I want more land to be devoted to growing my food.'
I don't need to be liked, but I need to be vital - on set or on stage - and I think that probably would be my advice: Stay vital. It's about saying 'no' and asking the tough questions and believing in yourself when no one else will, but you have to know the rules to break them.
What I'd really like to write is a romantic comedy. This is my favorite kind of movie. I feel almost embarrassed revealing this, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.
Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.'
Every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. There is a saying of the elders that goes, 'Step from under the eaves and you're a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting.' This is not a matter of being careful. It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.
In 2002, a Scottish journalist, during a dinner meant to be private, absolutely wanted me to react to Stephen Hawking's comments. I said one shouldn't pay too much attention to what Hawking was saying because he was a celebrity but not a specialist of elementary particle theory.
To me, great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother. It can change your perception of something. Is it wrong to change your perception about something? Of course not. I'm not lying; I'm just saying, 'This one's more fun, this one's more exciting.'
For better or worse, when I was director of public prosecutions I had to deal with every challenge that came up, and come up with an answer. Being in opposition, you're not taking the decisions; you're saying what you would do if you were in power, and that's deeply frustrating.
Sports are the ultimate secular religion. Instead of being worried about whether your kids will be okay or how your job is going, you have your team, and you can focus all of your angst and your hopes and dreams on your team. I am in no way saying it always relieves any of this!
I don't say no as much as I should. I'm an extreme workaholic. So I can be sick, and I still say yes to anything. When you are the CEO of your own company, editor of your own videos, your own writer ,and you do every role yourself, you have a hard time saying no to opportunities.
On the first day of school, you got to be real careful where you sit. You walk into the classroom and just plunk your stuff down on any old desk, and the next thing you know the teacher is saying, 'I hope you all like where you're sitting, because these are your permanent seats.'
I believe the answers to most problems that confront us around the world can and should be approached by engaging both friend and foe in dialogue. No, I don't naively think that dialogue always works, but I believe we should avoid the rigidity of saying that dialogue never works.
Your look changes depending on your confidence, and then your beauty changes. When I first came to New York, all the people were saying, 'You look so Asian because you have a different eye shape.' They didn't really understand because they didn't really see that many Asian models.
There are lots of research, of course, saying that a vast majority of us have been exposed to racial biases and stereotypes and, to some extent, we've internalized them, because that's so ubiquitous. That's why I'm so bored with the conversation about who's a racist and who's not.
When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.
Embrace who you are, and if people don't understand you, that's their own problem, that's their own insecurities. They're really the one with the problem - the people who are judging you and saying negative things to you, they are really the people with the problem, not you at all.
Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch, and then dashing off to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals. That's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, 'I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.'
I've been saying it before the lottery, before the Phoenix Suns even had the No. 1 pick. I've just been talking it into the existence. I'm not saying I'm the best player in the draft and trying to be cocky like that, but I was just saying I'm going to be the No. 1 pick, regardless.
We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you'll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you're going to have to keep on saying that. You're going to have to say that I am a proletariat; I am the people.
When he would give you direction, it was not sitting in a chair saying, 'Hey, babe! Do this and that and the other thing.' Mr. Sirk would ask, 'May I speak with you?' and sit down and say, 'I think this should be done this way. And how do you feel about it? Do you feel it that way?'
I remember studying so hard for so long and saying to my parents, 'I will be a teacher.' And they were looking at me like, 'Girl... you just want to be on stage. Stop pretending.' So when I chose to do music, they were relieved. My parents were more intelligent and lucid than I was.
There's that saying: 'God gave you talent, and if you don't use it He'll take it away from you.' And I always said, 'I don't want God to come down and take my talents away.' So, by using all these talents and being successful in all of them, I've always got something to fall back on.
Chicago's known for the drill. Keefs, Lil Durks, and whatnot. My music, on the other hand, it has a message to it. I think that's what sets me apart. I think it gets deeper than saying anything on a trap beat. I'm putting stories together, and people are relating to what I am saying.
I got a call from my agent saying you have an offer to voice a cartoon by the name of 'My Little Pony.' And that's pretty much what went in my ear. So I asked him the three questions that actors always ask. I need to see the script, when and how much, which were legitimate questions.
Had I not done Shakespeare, Pinter, Moliere and things such as 'Godspell' - I played Judas in a hugely successful production before I did 'Elm Street' - I'd probably be on a psychiatrist's couch saying: 'Freddy ruined me.' But I'd already done 13 movies and years of non-stop theatre.
I think it's not really difficult to write about love. We've been saying the same thing over and over for so many years. But it depends on how honest it is and how good you make it feel. You can say 'I love you' in a trillion ways, and it can always sound different or feel different.
I think there is a misconception that being open and honest and saying what it is you want is something we should be embarrassed about. But that's just not me. I am a very honest person. I always tell somebody what I am looking for, and I don't want people to waste my time, basically.
Once I was walking from The Mercer in New York - because otherwise I don't walk anywhere - and this woman paparazzo who was following me fell over a fire hydrant and her whole tooth went through her lip. I leant over her, saying, 'Are you all right?' and she was still taking pictures.
The reason we went into jewelry was we were trying to cater to our consigner base, who was saying, 'Can you sell this for me? Can you sell that?' And we said, 'You can bring in your jewelry and watches; we have a gemology and a watch expert on site.' And it just exploded our business.
All the other rappers around me aren't saying anything worthwhile. They're lost in rap: all they do is tell you they're a sick MC and they're better than you. I don't want to look like all these other little punk, dress-up, fake, manufactured artists. I'm not a rapper. I'm an activist.
Realness is something in such short supply; you can't believe anything anyone is saying when you turn on the television, and then during the commercials, they are lying to you there also. You can't believe anything, but when you go see a drag show, something real is happening on stage.
For me, and I've been on record saying it, let's create two leagues: one for players who want the college football experience, and another for those that want to get paid, have the NFL help fund it, whatever. Guys who don't want to go to school to get an education, let them go to work.
I feel badly for those girls who have to be so waif thin, doing those catwalks all the time because, luckily, we're going into a different time - that's what they're saying, at least - in we're appreciating a curvier figure. But to be honest, I couldn't be like an hourglass if I tried.
Whenever I am faced with someone spreading negativity in my relationship, I remember the old saying, 'Misery loves company.' I am also reminded to be mindful of the company you keep. Sometimes you cannot see a hater until you are happy. It is then that they demonstrate their negativity.
With 'Break The Night,' each verse is saying, 'Nothing's going right today; nothing ever does.' It's about that kind of repetition, it's that kind of mantra you can get in your mind when you're depressed or down, when it's become like a hamster on a wheel - it's very difficult to break.
When I've been on shows as a guest, I'm backstage, so I don't usually hear what the warm-up is saying, so I went and watched a couple of people do it and thought, 'Actually, I reckon this is do-able.' The audience is usually excited to be there; it's just getting a good chat with people.
By the end of the 1950s, American cars were so reliable that their reliability went without saying even in car ads. Thousands of them bear testimony to this today, still running on the roads of Cuba though fueled with nationalized Venezuelan gasoline and maintained with spit and haywire.
Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying. And that can make a world of difference.
At the end of your career, you go, 'I'm gonna be able to retire undefeated and be one of the very, very few people in history to do it.' People were saying I should try and get to 50-0, but my number was 46 - that was it. I could have kept trying, but one loss would have spoiled everything.
To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things - and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.
My generation, we really have to step up to the plate and vote. Tweeting is great - people say, 'Oh, I don't want this or that' - but at the end of the day, tweeting isn't a ballot. Just saying that you don't like someone on Twitter is not going to turn a state blue or red. You have to vote.
I'm going to put a museum on my ranch and people keep saying, 'That's a huge idea.' Yeah, it's big, but not bigger than the average big movie. A hundred million dollars in the art world is a substantial amount of cash to do anything. That's maybe a big gallery's total sales for a given year.
If I'm shopping at the Gap or Old Navy, I'm saying that I'm an ordinary person: I don't want to be seen; I don't want to stand out. That's a statement. If I'm wearing a leather jacket, there's something about me that's kind of a rebel. So everybody says something, whether they want to or not.
When you first arrive in India, you think, 'God, these Indians treat their servants so badly! How awful!' It's something in the air, and something about the way people are, that very few people hold out. I wasn't able to. Everybody goes local. You stop saying 'thank you' and things like that.
I had a song back in 1992 talking about 'It's all good.' Then my partner Theo who used to work for 92.3 The Beat in L.A. started saying 'You know it's all good' on the radio and everybody took it back to their soils like that was the new Cali word. But that's a regular word form the Bay Area.
Most people are squeamish about saying how much they earn, but in medicine the situation seems especially fraught. Doctors aren't supposed to be in it for the money, and the more concerned a doctor seems to be about making money the more suspicious people become about the care being provided.
I watched 'Drag Race Thailand' without any subtitles or voiceovers or anything; I don't speak Thai but I do speak drag, so I felt like I understood exactly what was going on, even though I couldn't speak Thai. I didn't understand anything they were saying but I knew exactly what was happening.
Anyone with a heart, with a family, has experienced loss. No one escapes unscathed. Every story of separation is different, but I think we all understand that basic, wrenching emotion that comes from saying goodbye, not knowing if we'll see that person again - or perhaps knowing that we won't.
Kamala Harris is fumbling and she's like, 'Oh, I'm going to go after Twitter because Elizabeth Warren sucked all the oxygen out of the room.' She's standing up and saying, 'I'm going to go after Facebook, I'm going to break them up, I'm going to go after all of these big technology companies.'