People who work with me say I have a four-step response to new ideas: rejection, reconsideration, acceptance, ownership. I need to listen more patiently.
Our biggest goal is to continue to force ourselves to always start our creative work on a white page and not take advantage of past successes and challenging ourselves.
I got successful awfully quick, and I wanted it... But I do think there is responsibility to move the musical theater form forward. I think you always have to be aware of the work that came before and build on that.
I don't like abrasion while I'm working. I don't thrive on chaos. I enjoy what I'm doing, and it seems to work better when I am enjoying it.
The pressure, the heat, the almost impossibly fast pace at which you need work - this is the reality of working in the culinary industry. This is what professional chefs do night after night.
It's kind of like a midlife crisis kind of thing. When you turn 40, you have to run the marathon, while all the parts still work properly.
The work environment is very important in determining how enjoyable work is. It is very important to work with smart guys who have a superior level of intellectual bandwidth and still have softer skills as well.
I always had the old-school model that I'm going to work for as long as I'm relevant and focus on for-profit activities and someday when I retire I'm going to learn about philanthropy.
I don't care what hours you work. I don't care if you sleep late or if you pick a child up from school in the afternoon. It's all about your output.
I began my work in the '70s, teaching at a university in Bangladesh, and these economic theories that I had learned stopped ringing true for me, as I saw the misery of people living all around me.
For years I drove a big Ford F250 pickup. That was my ride because two-thirds of my work was wood work, and I'm always driving up to Northern California, where I harvest salvaged trees.
But quality of work can be expected only through personal satisfaction, dedication and enjoyment. In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensible luxury, but a simple necessity.
The idea that one might derive satisfaction from his or her successful work, because that work is ingenious, beautiful, or just pleasing, has become ridiculed.
We cannot look backwards. What we have to do is raise our heads, look forward, roll up our sleeves and work.
I'm never too ambitious when I go into the studio. I always know that I'm just going into the studio to work on or try to develop an idea that I have for a song.
There's an old maxim that says, 'Things that work persist,' which is why there's still Cobol floating around.
I feel sorry for the person who can't get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile.
Tom Ford once told me that he found French women sexier than American ones. He said, 'Americans are too clean...' I took no offense.
Even by common wisdom, there seem to be both people and objects in my dream that are outside myself, but clearly they were created in myself and are part of me, they are mental constructs in my own brain.
But Nita had always seen having a child as selfish. Why bring another soul into this world, she'd say, when there are so many out there that need our help?
Sometimes it's better not to ask-or to listen-when tell you something can't be done. I didn't ask for permission or approval. I just went ahead and did it.
