I don't think you should spend your life praying for things, but I do believe you should thank God for what He's given you... but I think the scripture teaches us that we can pray for our dreams, pray for the big things... he's not a small God; this ...
I'd gotten the message in my home, starting with my grandfather, that real work, the kind that makes you sweat and gets your hands dirty, is a respectable, necessary thing. But I wanted to write - and writing didn't qualify. Whenever I told my parent...
I love New York, and I'm drawn to a certain intensity of life, but I've just never felt like I want to escape from the Midwest. A writer lives a great deal in his own head, and so one intuitively finds places where your head is more clear. New York f...
But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this wo...
Women tell me they won't date a guy with bad shoes. There are good-looking guys with good-looking outfits, and then really bad-looking square toe I-don't-even-want-to-mention-the-label kind of shoes. There is no reason for that. Again, invest in some...
I teach in M.F.A. programs now, and I think that's a great way to become a novelist, but I mourn that Pete Dexter and Joan Didion's route is maybe less likely because there are fewer of those jobs. I always liken it to playing piano in some great div...
I think it's absolutely possible for any woman to use the moves I do with Lady Gaga. Just put on her 'Born This Way' video or turn on one of her songs, spend 20 minutes and get a routine down just by watching our choreography. You'll start to see a d...
Tisch has a great film program and a great acting program, but they are segregated; you don't really intertwine. My peers knew I liked acting, so they'd be like, 'Go get that guy Gubler. He'll be in your student film.' I was in the same building. I b...
I took theatre and stuff in college, then I took a bunch of different acting classes here in L.A. Sometimes when I have a hard audition, I'll call my acting coach and he'll come help me. I actually get more nervous in acting class than I do at an act...
I would have done well as a gypsy child, I think. A circus baby. I coulda played a great street urchin or ragamuffin. Or just been one. I certainly liked entertaining people and making jokes, but I don't know necessarily if that's what your child is ...
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going...
It was a good 15 or 20 years before anyone at Rand would be in the same room with me. They didn't want the question raised, 'What's your relationship with Daniel Ellsberg?' And not one of them wrote me a letter because they didn't want a letter of th...
I have certain things that I stand for, certain things that I believe in, and if you don't like it and you tell me to go to hell, I think that's your God-given right as a fan. It's one of those deals where I'm that one guy who is outside of that real...
A young person, or someone who's writing in a different way - in some ways you could say, eventually someone will find them. Eventually someone will hear them. But it's good a lot of young people persevere. Because sometimes you have to send somethin...
It's hard to be a celebrity nowadays. It's not about your track record anymore. If you have a great movie, you're good. If not, people are ready to write you off. I think the only ones who are really winning are people like Will Smith. People go, 'Oh...
As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still jus...
No matter how good you think you are as a leader, my goodness, the people around you will have all kinds of ideas for how you can get better. So for me, the most fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility to continue to get feedback a...
I don't want to be the guy who goes, 'Oh yeah, blah blah blah... everyone freaking well knows me.' Because that's not the case. Once in a while, someone will remember some silly thing I did and then they feel good. And they go, 'Oh, hey, Michael Bolt...
It would be good if teachers could genuinely understand that black English is not mistakes, it's just different English, and that what you want to do is add an additional dialect to black students' repertoire rather than teaching them out of what's t...
When I read James Joyce, I'm not really interested in the Dublin of 1904. I'm interested in being in the presence of a voice and a sensibility underpinned by an authenticity which, I think, if you're a good writer, you can extract from the specific d...
A lot of people say I tried to emulate Tupac, but when I look back at my career, we're very different artists. I took pages out of Pac's book, of course, and lots of other rappers - Biggie, Nas - of course you take pages out of those books, but you e...
