The kind of theater that I do is sort of 'narrative realism,' which I think in the broadest sense is legitimate to say is mainstream. I mean, in a certain sense, Suzan-Lori's plays have had mainstream levels of success. But Suzan-Lori is in some ways...
Ten years ago, 15 years ago, I think the church would have been asleep at the switch. This level of activism and engagement with the needs of society by local churches I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime.
I think every writer has a book that haunts them, and on some level, every book you write is a reaction to it. 'Lolita' is that book for me. Nabokov's love of wordplay, descriptive detail, artfully complex plots, and his themes of obsession and lost ...
Young adults love to play games and they're thirsty for social interaction, but a lot of bar and restaurant experiences are quite unsatisfactory on the social level. What young people need is a place that has the feel of an unhosted party where they ...
Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don't look at myself as a ...
This game wears on you. It tears you down. It's perpetual motion for some people who've achieved a level of independence, like Madonna and Jay-Z - they don't need to do music anymore. But there's people who need it. And in that need, that's when it's...
The music industry used to be able to control a single dance on the very smallest level of when people are supposed to hear it, and when they're supposed to start liking it, and when they're supposed to start buying it. And that's trashed, you know, ...
If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men beha...
Both TV and movies seem to be produced in a more similar way as time goes on. It used to be that movies were much bigger productions on every level and took much longer to shoot. I liked that. But with the advent of digital, everything can be done mu...
I don't know many women who can relate to Sharon Stone and the kind of movies she does. I don't know a lot of guys who can relate to Tom Cruise's movies because they're on a kind of fantastic level. I like movies I can relate to.
There's definitely a luxury to the fluidity of not being a mega-star. I've done a ton of really, really odd, off-the-wall movies. There's this movie I did called 'Queens of Country' a couple of summers ago that is so bananas, and if I was at a certai...
Jake Sully: [Narrating] Outcast. Betrayer. Alien. I was in the place the eye does not see. I needed their help. And they needed mine. But to ever face them again, I was gonna have to take it to a whole new level.
Jim: Look at my hand. [raises hand and holds it level] Bart: Steady as a rock. Jim: [raises his other hand, which is violently trembling] Yeah, but I shoot with this one.
The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.
The immense distance between God and humanity is the indispensable backdrop to a Christian idea of revelation. To reduce God to the level of human thought and human imagination, so that we can comprehend God, is to lose a sense of the very thing that...
We don't need flowery words about inequality to tell us that, and we don't need a party that has led while poverty and hunger rose to record levels to give us lectures about suffering.
The beauty of the infantry is its ability to truly teach tolerance. At the lowest level, when it is simply a matter of survival to count on everyone around you, regardless of religion or skin color, the only logical option is to ignore the difference...
The impulse for me to want to make sculpture is because I want to make statements, really, on a purely emotional level. And it's also somewhat of a challenge to see how that can be done with materials and objects that really are not emotional, in and...
Maleficent was always so elegant. She always was in control. And to play her was difficult. I worked on my voice a lot. She's bigger than me. She's on a different level of performance that I have never done.
When I think of the library of Alexandria and of the fact that, although it burnt down, people continue to sort the letters of the alphabet according to that tradition, then that makes certain expressions of modernity, even of interventions on the te...
When I am on a long run in a play, I'm not sure how I would fill the days if I did not paint or write. On a basic level, it just stops me going crazy.