Egyptian drumming happens to be a favorite of mine. It's a really simple instrument, but it's really difficult to play. You can take it anywhere with you - you can play it in your room, in an airport. It's very quiet, so you explore the quiet side.
In many ways, it is very real, because I sat there for 9 days, and it was constantly happening, and that was the 9 days of making the film. But you can't say that it's 100% true, because there are places where I've been intrusive and interfered.
It’s common in the middle of a drought . . . to forget that rain is the norm. Or in the middle of a flood to forget that floods rarely happen. Or when bad news comes from the doctor to forget that, for most of us, this comes after many years of rel...
I have a thing against reality shows. I think they are so fake. I think they are produced before they begin. I think people know where they're going, what they're going to say, what the situation is. These things just don't happen and you know that.
There's one thing about TV that I really think is true. If you find the right cast and the right writers, and you got some chemistry going, even if a show is taking a little while to find an audience, if you keep it there, that audience will find it....
What happens is that the people who are leaders in any field are copied. I mean, there's a reason why every wine newsletter tends to look like mine. They see someone who's been successful, so they sort of copy these same ideas.
I wanted to play piano in restaurants in the south of France. I went there on holiday once and I saw this guy playing in an old tuxedo. He was all disheveled, with a whisky glass on the piano. I thought that was the coolest thing. So what's happened ...
Maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy: Don't do to other nations what we don't want happening to us. We endlessly bomb these countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?
A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the p...
When I write for kids, I have to make sure they know what can't happen. They have to know it's a fantasy. But when I write for adults, they have to think it's real. Every detail has to be real or they won't buy it.
I don't want people to spend their nights worrying about getting hit by asteroids. But I do want them to encourage their political leaders to invest in the insurance, which will allow us to prevent it from happening.
Not long ago I made a list of Doc Ford books I would like to do, and I came up with 11 pretty easily. I like to let the characters go their own ways and see what happens. I find them fascinating.
Magical realism is a blending of the unusual or supernatural into an otherwise ordinary setting. And, to me, this perfectly describes the South. 'The Sugar Queen' involves a lot of magical happenings, but in a very down-home Southern setting. It's fu...
Artists are creating their own genre sound, and other artists are building upon that sound and already creating a huge subculture created around one particular sound created by one artist. So, with all that happening, the genres are going to break do...
Wall Street shouldn't be deregulated. I think Wall Street and Main Street need to play by the same set of rules. The middle-class can't carry the burden any longer, that is what happened in the last decade. They had to bail out Wall Street.
...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.
I really loved Andy Kaufman growing up, like every comedy person does. I like when sometimes the audience isn't quite sure what's supposed to be happening right then and that sort of unsafe feeling, as long as you're not punishing them.
The goal is to have to do the shot again because the camera guy shook a little bit as he was laughing. Without that happening, I'm not happy because there's nothing better for me than a world that everybody's just trying to make each other laugh.
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.
As it happens, however, no one in my family recognizes the existence of an impossibility. (We’re not specially courageous, we’re just bullheaded as all get-out, and the whole lot of us as independent as a hog on ice. Every last one of us would ar...
I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence.
