I was in Peru and visited a building near Lima built by the Incas. It was low in height, with no windows at all, but all the way in the back there was air movement. And I couldn't figure out how they'd done it; it was incredible.
'Gatekeeper' was sort of my first attempt to put a little bit of a frame and boundaries around songwriting, and try to figure out a way to approach it that had a sort of end result in mind. I haven't written many like that.
Something that I think I figured out slowly was if you're playing a show and there's a chatter or there is, you know, a lot of noise - people talking or something - I was never the one whose instinct was to try to be louder than them.
I looked it at like this way. To get folks to like you, as a screen player I mean, I figured you had to sort of be their ideal. I don't mean a handsome knight riding a white horse, but a fella who answered the description of a right guy.
Truly, the challenges we face are not Democratic challenges or Republican challenges. In fact, they are not political challenges at all; they are fiscal challenges, and educational challenges, and the challenges of figuring out how to take care of ea...
What I have to do now is figure where my passion is, and follow my heart; I've proven that if I have the passion for something then I can succeed. I haven't been listening to my heart in the last little while.
One of my earliest memories is being inside the recording studio and I see the shadow of a figure that looks an awful lot like Walt Disney. Then the door opened and Mr. Disney walked in and said, 'Hi Clint.' I won't ever forget that.
I have a personality that tends to be somewhat compulsive, and I do tend to think in a circular way. I dwell on the same things over and over and I try to figure out different ways of looking at the same issue.
We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.
I do have a lot of difficulty figuring out what I want to be working on, but what's the alternative? To be one of those people who has a million things they want to do, and then never does any of them? And then where will you be?
We shouldn't deny the right of the minority to filibuster, but we need to do a much better job of making them own it. That way, the American people could figure out who is being obstructionist and who is willing to compromise.
I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this. [ , New York Times, April 19, 1992]
But 'Memento' was so successful, such a huge cult hit, almost on the scale of a large film. If that had happened, with all the acclaim, before the next job, I'd have found it very difficult to figure out what to do next.
In many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio; we build the songs that way.
If you, or any public-spirited programmer, wanted to figure out what the software on your machine is really doing, tough luck. It's illegal to reverse engineer the source code of commercial software to find out how it works.
I'm such a horror geek, comic geek and action figure geek. I'm inspired by so much - from Hunter S. Thompson and Quentin Tarantino to 'The Dark Knight' and 'Halloween'. Just show me something that doesn't suck, and I'm happy.
I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.
I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.
I do think 'All Is by My Side' is the type of film I'm the most happiest. You know, I'm figuring it out. I did just move to New York, so I have to pay my rent.
My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin—the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole man. ... Where are the life-size—or even pint-size—Benjamin Franklins of today?
Order is the first law of heaven, and you have to have order to survive on Earth. Figure out what has to be done each day, each week, each year and develop a system to achieve it.
