Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's bred in me that I only see real work as getting stuck in and getting your hands dirty.
To me, it doesn't make any sense to pick your work based on the size of the budget of the movie.
Doing something you enjoy at times of your own choosing and making a living from it: now tell me, is that work?
You have all the ambition of winning a championship and competing in your hometown. For me, it didn't work out that way.
I come from the theater, where the response to your work is immediate, and I suppose there's a part of me that still craves that.
My father worked real hard. I admired him. My father taught me you needed to work with your brain and not your back. I've made that a passion.
I don't confess in my work because to me, that implies that you're dumping all your guilt and sins on the page and asking the reader to forgive you.
There's a lot of kids just like me growing up in the Philippines, so I don't want them to give up. So listen to your parents, work hard and you can achieve so much.
For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs - like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that's it.
Some actors can create characters and leave them at 'Cut!', but I work the opposite way and drag them out of me. For me, it's about fixing your fabric to fit the role.
When I work, I work very hard. When I don't work, I have to do something where my endeavor can totally take me off what I do professionally, like sailing. It takes all your attention.
I used to think I was a big star. And I used to think that the TV industry, Balaji, and my show will not survive without me. But then I realised that you cannot be bigger than your work.
Film is the toughest one for me, as there are many fingers in the pot, so it can be disappointing. However, to have your work seen on such a large scale, that's a very exciting prospect.
In my newspaper days, your endings could be literally sliced off in the composing room, so it was dangerous to get attached to them. Yet I think this has made me work harder on endings in fiction.
I am not interested in churning out a certain number of films every year. For me, it's about the quality of work. I think it's about following your instincts and doing a film for the right reason.
Here I am, a struggling actor, and movie executives are saying to me, 'My son's not playing much. What can we do about that?' How do I tell someone I'm dying to work with, 'Your kid is kind of lazy?'
To be known as an actor is to be known for your role and lines. But the country knows me for the stance I have taken, for the villages I have adopted, the social work I do, the comfort zone I have left.
Work hard. I got tenure a year early. Junior faculty members used to say to me: 'Wow, what's your secret?' I said: 'It's pretty simple. Call me any Friday night in my office at 10 o'clock, and I'll tell you.'
I'm looking for a living wage and to continue my work. The frustration comes from when I can't do the things that matter most to me. It's when someone comes and says, 'I will finance your movie if you cast so and so.'
Know your career values: Not your parents' values, not your friends', but what you personally value in work. For me, it's things like moving quickly and scrappily, ownership and authority over my work, and flexibility.
If the work is pure then you have to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesn't mean that your work is not accessible. It doesn't worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my work.
Some people would ask: 'You are not the one who does the painting, or shot the work, how can it be your work?' But I was the one who chose which site we should use, and which assistant helps me to do the painting, or the shot.
I'm not able to work anymore as an actor and still at the level I would want to... you start to lose your memory. You start to lose your confidence. You start to lose your invention. So, that's pretty much a closed book for me.
Being a magician taught me how powerful the element of surprise can be. In each book, I've tried to work that in - an unexpected twist in a story that reveals an insight, a counter intuitive study that turns your beliefs upside-down.
The American Dream is simple: it's the unwavering belief that anybody - you, me, your friends, your neighbors, grandma Verna - can become exceedingly successful, and all it takes is the right amount of work, ingenuity, and determination.
Self-publishing worked for me. Being able to put your work in print, even if it's a tiny print-on-demand print run of a dozen or so copies, shows publishers and editors a completed piece of work and that you can follow through on a project.
It's a cliche, but the people who enjoy your work and who come up and say, 'I enjoyed that and I liked that,' they are the people who ultimately are keeping you in work. And so, it would be rude and ungrateful of me to be anything but polite.
You have to get out there and compete. You have to work hard. People aren't just going to come knocking on your door and say, 'Please let me invest $1 billion in your back yard.' You need to be able to go and match the pitch and close the deal.
My feelings are, if you're gonna lead a rock n' roll lifestyle, don't let it affect your work. I know I can stay up all night and still come in the next day and write a song, and nothing will stop me from doing it. I expect the same from everyone else.
When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.
I enjoy those small chats you have when people come up and talk to you about your work. It only involves a few seconds of effort to be nice to those people, and I am very grateful for the kind words that people have taken the trouble to express to me in person.
In particular, Stewart Lee and Tony Law, people who could have been really critical, were really supportive of me, and I'll never forget that, and I want to be that person, so you have to work really hard to repress your natural jealousies and be one of those people.
Let me tell you something... If you're anybody - not just me, but anybody - and you can put an oven that doesn't work at all on eBay and sign your name on it and sell it for 1200 bucks, and somebody will drive from Seattle to Dallas, Texas, to get it, that's pretty cool.
The higher the unemployment rate, the more leverage I have to 'encourage' you to 'do what it takes' to keep your job. And so you work even more hours, pushing unemployment up and wages down. And that, my friends, is one of the little tricks that keeps you poor and me rich.
People make a mistake when they think that if you just accumulate a set number of things on your resume, it's going to lead you to a particular place - the pattern of essentially compiling credentials to climb your way up a ladder. That may work, but that's not at all what happened to me.
You're going up against the billionaire boys' club or trying to find your way into something you have no basis for, and it's bigger than anything you ever imagined - and then actually having that work. Having that risk pan out. It taught me to be very fearless - maybe too fearless in the end.
I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own.
My advice for finding a literary agent would be first, put your work out there as much as possible and hopefully someone will find you, because I still have literary agents writing to me after they find my site. You want someone who understands your work and is going to be your cheerleader from day one.
What I learned from my work as a physician is that even with the most complicated patients, the most complicated problems, you've got to look hard to find every piece of data and evidence that you can to improve your decision-making. Medicine has taught me to be very much evidence-based and data-driven in making decisions.
I have my own cosmology that's kind of like an esoteric mix of a lot of different things that work for me and that to me, are worth exploring. There is a little bit of the archetypal Christianity that I've kind of reconciled because when you're raised that way, inevitably that infrastructure will persist into your adulthood.
No one forces me, or any other writer, to sell a film option on the books. If you don't want to run the risk that the filmmakers may adapt your work in a way you don't like, then you don't sell the option. You know when you sell it that they will have to make some changes, just because film and TV are different media than books.
I like working. I wish I could say I made a deliberate choice to comedy, but it's just what came my way. It's what the studios wanted to make. Some of my friends were doing it, like Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, and they offered me 'Talladega Nights.' It's just nice work if you can get it. It's a joyful day at work, making your friends laugh.