Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Well, I don't really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.
Some people can work on the road, and that's incredibly impressive... maybe I'm not working myself hard enough.
In the early '80s, I happened to find myself in the vicinity of people who would work for Microsoft five years later.
I've been on a lot of film sets, and I've always promised myself I wouldn't create a set where people dread coming to work.
I work hard, so I surround myself with people that work just as hard. It's important if you want to create a successful brand.
I want people to know that I'm getting where I'm going or how I'm getting there - by myself, through my hard work, and nothing more.
I've always surrounded myself with people who are driven. You can be gorgeous, but if you don't want to work for it, nothing is not going to happen.
People feel that I have overachieved, but I feel that, myself, that I work tremendously hard in the gym. I feel almost I have underachieved a little bit.
I seek speed, clarity, and a practical approach in people I mingle and work with. I can't see myself working in films that stretch beyond maximum four months.
Clothes if they are not well cut, you can kill nobody. A building poorly built can kill people. It's a much more difficult work. I would not compare myself with that.
I don't take myself very seriously. I like to make people laugh. You know, it's like, if a woman can't be happy for another woman's work, they have to go work on that.
I myself don't know what makes my books work. I enter a bookstore and I'm frankly overwhelmed by the number of books in most of them, and I know people are buying mine.
I really don't feel it's necessary, as an actor, to make people feel uncomfortable, just because you need to be in a certain headspace. So, I do take myself away and do my own work and hunker down.
I knew that if I wanted to stop being a pushover I had to get comfortable with small rejections myself. That took some work, but because of it I can now say 'no' to other people with a clear conscience.
With stand-up, I can have an idea, go down the street to a comedy club and work on it, flesh it out, book a venue, people will come, then film it. I do all that myself; I never have to answer to anybody.
I do try to do high-impact work, and I try to think of ideas people haven't thought about that have broad implications, but I don't restrict myself to that. I try to work on things that I find interesting.
It would have shown people that I was prepared to do that kind of work, although I find myself in a position now where I don't really need to and I could pick and choose the kind of characters I'd like to do.
I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.
I'm proud of 'Fifty Shades of Grey.' I don't need to distance myself from that. The more work I do, the more the general public sees the different things I can do. Do I think it opened doors? Yeah. More people know my name.
I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I've never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I've wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn't work.
Why retire from something if you're loving it so much and enjoying it so much, and you're blessed with another group of people to work with like the gang on 'Hot in Cleveland?' Why would I think of retiring? What would I do with myself?
I don't write for a particular audience. I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.
I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work, and it creates this strange connection.
The work that I engage with, whether it's self-generated or collaborative, is uplifting and supporting historically marginalized and disenfranchised people, because when I uplift up those groups, I'm uplifting myself and supporting myself - it works out in that way.
When I was a teenager I loved acting, but I really just loved it for myself. I didn't like the fact that anyone else saw the work I was doing. When I moved to New York, I started to realize that I wanted people to see the stuff that I was doing, and I wanted it to mean something to them.
I don't know if this is the kind of retrospective analysis that people are fond of applying to their work or actions, but it feels like I knew I was going to be famous and I knew that an element of that would be traumatic, so that if I could make myself something big and otherworldly, it would be a kind of defence.
I'm not totally blind to the fact that I like people to see my work, but if it's not something I would enjoy seeing in a magazine, then I think I shouldn't be making it. I think that I don't represent only myself, I represent more people; I mean, if I like it, then I think more people will like it because I think I'm quite a normal guy.