Our history is an inevitable component of our being. One thing only can release us from the grip of our history. That one thing is forgiveness.
I think family is the most important thing in the world. I think your own family is the most complicated thing in the world, and I think it's the most beautiful thing in the world.
What bothers me about the whole trust-fund thing is that it sort of presumes that everything is handed to you. And if there is one thing about my family that I do identify with, it is that everyone is extremely hardworking.
One of the things I've really gotten past in the last couple of years is the idea of being made uncomfortable by the way things appear, rather than how things are. Clearly in this business you have to contend with a lot of that.
A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know that they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence.
The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.
I never have time to myself; it's the one thing about my life I would probably hope to change.
To look is one thing, to see is another thing; to see is very difficult, normally; to look is to try to see. I have looked and I hope I have seen.
The one thing I would hope would go on my tombstone is, 'I made my parents proud.'
You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.
When you revolutionize education, you're taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you're priming the pump for so many incredible things.
The last thing I want is for people to go through the motions in life. We're all meant to do different things, but there's a lot of opportunity for us to do some great things.
I am a great observer of things, and I do it all the time. I store stuff; I use it as an actor; that sort of recall, of emotional memory and images of things, just tastes of things.
I don't believe that old cliche that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad they can't sit still.
There are so many factors that go into how you feel, as a performer, on any given movie, that it's really hard to identify which things are the things that help you be good, and which are the things that hinder you.
I never regret things. It's a really dangerous thing to say, but for anyone involved in the arts, the bad things that happen make for good material. It's not a comfortable truth, but it is true.
The only thing that's changed is the competitiveness of the series. It's only become harder to win in our series as the years have gone by. Competition breeds good things, and that's what's happened here.
I really like to go for the essence of things - the most beautiful parts of things - of human beings or of music. If there are things in there that are getting in the way and complicating it, it's just not good for me.
I don't read reviews, and I try not to read articles about me. It taints your outlook: if you believe the good things, you've got to believe the bad things, too.
The whole, 'Is the Internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good - that's the really big challenge.
One of the big things that if you've got a guy who is doing things that other people could view as evil or bad, then you've got to find the silver lining: you've got to find the thing that makes this guy a good guy.
