I am the pianist of the duo, although Aleksey does pretty good... you know we've written more and more stuff where he has to play the piano. But you know, to be very honest, I actually went into music because I wanted to be a composer and a conductor...
I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who w...
A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, tha...
Everyone starts out desperately trying to make a hit, but some people are just more mistake-prone than others. I happened to be fairly mistake-prone. Of the 40 shows I made, I'd say ten were hits, which is a pretty good average.
I grew up in a community where it was not the exception to be a good girl. It was sort of expected. And all of my friends were good girls too, and my boyfriends were good boys. Everybody was pretty nice. And that affects how I write my characters. Th...
I've gotten pretty good with a tray between acting jobs. In fact, when I got the TV show 'Gravity' I was still doing my catering work. I told my director I had to miss rehearsal because I had to work a party. He was like, 'You're on TV. You need to g...
I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense...
If you don't have the confidence in baking, commit to making the recipe three times. The first two, do it exactly the way I've told you to make it. Twice. The first time you'll screw it up. The second time it will come out pretty good, and then the t...
I don't know David Cameron very well. I like him. I think you can judge a book by its cover - whoever said you can't is wrong - that's the whole point of nature giving us intuition, instinct and so on. I think the cover is pretty good.
My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; we've become the most famous bad orchestra i...
What I think is fair to say is that, coming out of the Republican camp, there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith - something which I find deeply offensive, and that has been going on for a prett...
One can always come up with funny lists and jokes. You know what? I take it back. Not everyone can always come up with funny lists and some jokes. I'm very lucky to have a gift where I can do that pretty ably.
The gummy bears tattoo was my idea. It's my son's favorite candy. The sketch was my other son's idea. It's a self-portrait of himself. I just showed the artist his sketch and had him tattoo it on my forearm. It looks like a stick person with big hair...
My mom was always pretty supportive. She saw me do plays and she'd always act out the parts I did. My aunt, who played a big part in my life, was a little bit more reserved, because if they don't see you on TV every week they think you must be starvi...
You want to be excited about what you're doing. So whenever I get tired, I think, 'Would ten-year-old Adam be pretty stoked on what I'm doing and what's happening?' So I just live my life as if I'm using my ten-year-old brain.
Nobody really turns out too happy in any of my stuff. It's really strange, because I'm actually a pretty happy person. I'm not walking around giggling or anything like that, but I've got this feeling that everything is okay with my life.
I write for myself; I'm trying to keep myself interested in the music. But at the same time, I want to make the songs relatable in a way; I want to keep melodies pretty simple and the lyrics open-ended so that people could maybe relate them to their ...
Once upon a time, I was very shy and you wouldn't even see me in a room. Then, when I was 16, I made the conscious decision to not be afraid of anything - this was about the time I picked up the bagpipes too - and my life pretty much changed forever.
You can't escape this feeling of disintegration. The world is fragile. But you also can't let it ruin your life. I'm actually a pretty composed person. I guess people imagine I spend my life thinking about crazy, sinister things but I don't, really. ...
I do miss 'Battlestar', the cast and crew. That was a pretty well-oiled machine. It's sort of like you don't know what you've got till it's gone. But I go to a lot of sci-fi conventions, and I love going and talking about the show.
I dream of working with iconic directors such as Tim Burton, Baz Luhrmann, Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson - so I'm setting my sights pretty high! My perfect role would be in a fairy-tale period piece, and I'm quite upset all the Harry Potter movies h...
