I probably made a few pictures I shouldn't have done, but I have four sons and I have to pay the rent. If you have a decision to make about whether or not you can buy groceries at the market or whether or not you're going to make a bad movie, you're ...
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offe...
Writing isn’t necessarily a gift it is a passion. You can write a one page masterpiece to 99 pages of crap. What keeps you coming back is that Zen moment when you enlightened your own self with a few cleverly arranged words and saved yourself a $20...
I had a bike accident a few years ago, and I went to the emergency room, and I had to have a gash sewn up. And I am the kind of person that I was sitting up fascinated, watching, to the extent that the doctor said, 'Do you want to do a couple of stit...
The rich pay more in total taxes now than ever before - ever. It's true. Just like it's true that when the rich are convinced they're going to be taxed more, they spend less. And when the top few percenters don't spend, there goes all your spending, ...
I try to take a weekly digital Sabbath, batch my emails so I deal with them a few times a day rather than constantly, and increasingly give myself permission to ignore unsolicited communiques. I try, too, to give others more slack. The respond-now cu...
Readers don't want to read about somebody else having powerful emotions. . . . Readers want to for a few hours, to live an exciting life, to find true love, to face down unimaginable terrors, to solve impossible puzzles, to feel a lightning jolt of a...
It wasn't so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it's just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace...
I was shocked when I moved to Sydney how very few indigenous people I came across. And so when I go to places like Maroubra or Redfern or Waterloo or Erskineville, I feel more at home because of the people I'm around - anywhere I can see a face that ...
When I'm home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience, and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't...
I'm interested in the origins of the religious experience, how the history of religion has evolved over the last umpteen thousand years, and where religiosity is going in the future. I think that's a topic I've been chewing on for a few years; I woul...
When David Fincher called me up a few years ago and said, 'Hey, I'd like you to score this film 'The Social Network,' I said, 'I'm flattered, but I really don't have any real experience scoring films, and I'd rather not screw it up on a high-profile ...
When I said a few weeks ago that our people would eat cooking oil and olives if necessary, I didn't mean that there really would be only oil and olives. What I meant was that our people have the necessary patience to endure the current difficult situ...
I've been thinking about disowning some of my genes lately. I have a few healthy, happy, long-living optimists in my family tree - most of them fans of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, a major champion of positive thinking. But I've got ple...
Work done by other people sounds easy. How hard can it be to take care of a newborn who sleeps 20 hours a day? How hard can it be to keep track of your billable hours? To travel for one night for business? To get a 4-year-old ready for school? To ret...
From the top of a high rock, I obtained a good few of the most extensive and dreary wilderness I ever beheld. It chilled the heart to gaze on these barrens of Labrador. Indeed, I now dread every change of harbor, so horridly rugged and dangerous is t...
Wal-Mart's size and scale is so vast they literally have the ability to change the face of the entire country. If Wal-Mart were to make a decision tomorrow to refuse to sell a single product made with partially hydrogenated oils, for example, we'd pr...
My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a fa...
Few men in their 70s looked as good as my father did. What was his secret? Genes, maybe, since he didn't exercise or diet, and he kept a candy drawer, drank a pot of black coffee every day, and read in the middle of the night. Still, he took such joy...
I know who my dad is, I've met him a few times, but I don't even call him dad. I know it sounds horrible, but I don't even see him as part of my family, to be honest. If you want the truth, it doesn't bother me because I don't know any different. I j...
I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget tha...
