Think about it: If you don't have any actual, tangible skills, then how can you do anything? You may be laughing and nodding, but do you realize how few people, when asked the basic question, 'What can you do?' stumble on the answer and have nothing ...
Africa is a huge continent; it would take several lifetimes of thousands of researchers testing in hundreds of languages to collect a valid sample of anything, especially IQ. Most Africans do their schooling in a second language, not their mother ton...
I like - there's a better word for it, but I like the danger that a comic brings to a role. It has a feeling, even though everything's scripted and everything's planned what you're going to do. When I see Will Ferrell or Sacha Baron Cohen, there's a ...
Rock n' roll was one thing, and then they chopped off the 'roll' and called it 'rock,' which became a sort of umbrella term for anything with a guitar in it. Like hair bands. How could we possibly believe that? It's just gotten downright silly, to th...
When the Beatles first came out, you had to go to a certain amount of trouble to have long hair. You just couldn't have it immediately. Anything you can just go out and get - like platform shoes - is not going to inspire people as much as something t...
What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make others people's decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or at the barri...
I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper bag. And I'd write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into th...
I have a treasure trove of Baker memories, all of which reinforce my sense of Howard Baker as one of the most decent people with whom I have worked. While I was simply a young staffer, he never treated me or my colleagues as anything else but equals.
'Bunk' is better than 'Wheel of Fortune' because we have a wheel, just like them, but our wheel is purposeless. It doesn't do anything. It just spins for no reason. Which is nice because it frees our wheel up to really pursue its dream: becoming a pr...
There’s no question about freedom of speech when everyone thinks exactly the same and no one says anything out of the accepted norms. In this kind of climate, even the mildest questions sound like heresy, and the outcome is intolerance of other peo...
I never got lessons. I took influence from Chet Baker, Ian Dury, and Joe Strummer. I don't hear my voice and think, 'Yeah, that's a banging voice!' It's more about putting the right emotions into the right words and the lyrics than anything else to m...
I came to New York when I was eighteen years old, and the first audition that I ever went to was this huge cattle call at the Equity building where I had gone two days earlier to sign up - I didn't have an agent or anything. It was for 'Chicago.' The...
When I would see my friends with their kids, I was envious that you can use children to get out of just about anything. If you don't feel like going to a dinner party, you could say, 'My kid's sick. I can't make it.' Who's gonna argue with you?
Anything that controls my state of mind I never really want to do because I always want to be under control. That might be part of me being a Virgo. I never want to do something that stops me from being in control of who I am and my actions.
I have become an adjective. There is something called a Rovian-style of campaigning and it's meant as an insult. One columnist said it consists mainly of throwing mud until it sticks. One prominent blogger described the elements of a textbook Rovian ...
I've always lived out of a suitcase. I was in a new city every three months. When I was a model, I traveled the world, and as an actor you're traveling from movie set to movie set. So I've never been in one place long enough for anything super-bad to...
I probably shouldn't say this about all animals, but at least the farm animals that I've hung out with, and even when I go to the zoo usually, they're like a blank slate. I guess that's why I like them. They're puppets, and you can imagine them being...
I use to worry about how hard it would be to stay the same. So I changed. Then I worried about how hard it would be to change. So, I stayed the same. Somewhere between staying the same and changing and changing and staying the same I’ve realized th...
I think imagination is at the heart of everything we do. Scientific discoveries couldn't have happened without imagination. Art, music, and literature couldn't exist without imagination. And so anything that strengthens imagination, and reading certa...
Listen, if you said to me, 'Adam Shankman is going to direct you in a musical and you have six months to learn how to tap,' I'd practice till I was blue in the face. I would do it because I'm so headstrong and think I can do anything. But just to sho...
I think it's necessary to identify with anything - with any character you play, there's got to be something in common, so you can link up to that person, even if it's like one tiny thing. But it's equally fun to play somebody completely different, an...
