I think the greatest all-around athlete ever was Jim Brown. He played lacrosse, basketball and ran track at Syracuse. He played professional football for the Browns.
To me he seemed one of those persons destined to failure of whom you wonder what purpose it can ever serve that they should have ben born.
I don't think the space station will ever do anything for exploration. Putting people up there for a year or more is the only way you will get anywhere near the exploration concept.
I know of no evil that ever existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of seventy or eighty thousand persons every year from their own land.
I don't think you should always stay calm in a tense situation, because you might not ever confront the problem. Maybe it's better to actually let yourself be tense - and find a solution.
Buckwheat, like Marmite and durian, is a seriously divisive foodstuff, so it needs a seriously capable defence team if it's ever going to make it on to most people's dinner tables.
A woman called me interesting once, and it kind of blew my mind. She said, 'You're one of the most interesting people I've ever met,' and I was like, 'Wow.'
Don't ever run away from your problems. Chase after them like a crazy person till they're too afraid to come near you again.
I bet in the All-Time History of Dating no girl has ever told a boy who has just asked her out that she has fleas-and then farted!
The Phil Spector that I would meet has always been a nice, quiet, little guy who's very serious about his work; obviously you can tell that because each and everything he's ever done has always been charted.
I was only ever part of 'Lost' - a very small part of an extremely talented writers' room, where as a writer, it's sort of your job to sublimate your ego and work in the service of the show and the show's voice.
If you've ever been around a group of actors, you've noticed, no doubt, that they can talk of nothing else under the sun but acting. It's exactly the same way with baseball players. Your heart must be in your work.
I actually worked for a small company in Ohio that sort of farmed out work from Disney and Dreamworks, so I really only ever worked in two studios.
Never has a strong, responsible trade union movement been so needed. With austerity policies biting hard and with no evidence that they are working, people at work need the TUC to speak up for them now more than ever.
I hardly ever watch my own work. I just end up picking myself apart! I can't even stand to hear myself on voicemail. the sound of my own voice is like nails on a chalkboard. The same goes for my records.
I hadn't ever felt any particular calling to be a novelist, and I clearly remember telling a friend of mine about six months before I started work on 'Elsewhere' that I would never write a novel.
But the indisputable fact is, a huge percentage of Obama's voters are basically wards of the state. There are millions of them, and they have no intention of voting for anyone who might want them to ever go out and work for a living - 'no matter what...
I wanted to be a police detective. In my work, particularly in documentaries, I am obsessed with finding things out, seeking ever-new facts and perspectives - each project can involve years of research.
You think when you start getting jobs that it'll get easier, but that's the biggest lie ever. It gets harder. You have to put in more work. I wish it were the casting couch days because it'd be a lot easier!
I don't know if there's ever been a female-driven film or a male-driven film. I don't believe in that. I believe a film is a film - a movie can only work if everything about the film works.
There are plenty of secondary characters that I had always hoped to write, but I don't know if it will ever happen. The way contracts work, if you leave one publishing house for another, the characters tend to stay with the previous publishing house.
