Novelists go about the strenuous business of marrying and burying their people, or else they send them to sea, or to Africa, or at the least, out of town. Essayists in their stillness ponder love and death.
I don't want to lie. I dislike dishonesty. And I work in Hollywood, a town and a business that relies on a lot of falsehoods with people hiding behind different facades. I don't want to be a part of that.
Los Angeles is such a town of show business, and I'm a terrible celebrity. I find it difficult - it's the beast that must be fed. There's this big wheel of pictures and articles that goes around, and you get pinned on it.
Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores - these didn't come out of nowhere.
As a person who came from a small town and had dreams of becoming an actor, I know what it's like to have no support system for what it is that you want to do. A lot of people think you don't have a chance.
Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.
All of Africa's resources should be declared resources of the state and managed by the nation. Our experience in Bolivia shows that when you take control of natural resources for the people of the town and village, major world change is possible.
Concerns about the size and role of government are what seem to leave reformers stammering and speechless in town-hall meetings. The right wants to have a debate over fundamental principles; elected Democrats seem incapable of giving it to them.
Yes, the small village that we live in, in Virginia, is a very interesting place, in terms of its Civil War history, because it was a town that was founded by Quakers in 1733.
I married a pretty famous girl, and when we drive through town there's usually a car following us, when I walk out of my front door in Chelsea there's six guys waiting for me.
I lived for two years in Odawara, a castle town an hour outside of Tokyo, near the sea. It's a beautiful place, and I drew on my experiences there when writing 'The Lake of Dreams.'
I'm a bad dater - I'm just not good at it. It's so weird dating in this town. It's like high school. I get a lot of people who have their publicist call my agent to ask, 'Is she dating anyone?'
The difference that a drama group or a cinema club can make to a small village or a town. It opens people up to ideas, potential about themselves that really, in a way, education often fails to. It's a way of drawing a community together.
One of the things that's great about New York is that it is not a one-industry town. It has education, academia, the service industry, arts, publishing, theater, politics, fashion, finance, as well as movie-making.
I know this is rather trivial - I will not be very deep about this - but it's great when you call the hottest restaurant in town and ask for a table for five at 8:00 P.M., and they say, 'Okay,' instead of, 'You have to wait two months.'
Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.
The great thing about this town hall format is that it allows us to hear what's on the minds of Americans. Tonight, it was clear - voters have quite a few questions about the direction in which the current administration is headed.
I grew up in a small town, in a small community, and I would not have had access to great plays when I was a kid were it not for the films of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.'
First of all, I'm a Midwesterner, being from Kansas, and Chicago is basically a big Midwestern cow town. It was built from the stockyards, and everyone is very friendly, and it's at the edge of the tallgrass prairie. There's just a good feel to it.
What I would do is a 10-minute short of some kind on video, and if it's good enough, you get it passed around town and just get some attention, so then they'll read what you have.
I'm not a pretty boy who came to town and burst out of the gate, which is a good thing, because if I was, I probably wouldn't have been good enough then. I probably wouldn't have lasted. So I was very lucky not to be pretty.
