The Syrians lost out because they happened to have their revolution during an election cycle in America, France, and bizarrely, some kind of election cycle in Russia. Obama wasn't going to be seen to commit anything to Syria, that would be political ...
The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a fluidity to it that is absent from most human relationships. If someone acted that way to you...
When we were filming 'The Darkest Hour,' we didn't even know what the aliens were going to look like, we didn't even have a graphic reference. So it was definitely a big challenge to sell those kind of extreme moments when you're just generating them...
If you're trying to learn how to act from a class, you're analyzing the teachers' movements and their intricacies, and it becomes like a pantomime of you wanting to be them, and that's wrong. Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then ...
I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of ...
My career is a burden, but I can't just fade out like a pathetic sore loser. More often than not, I'm just making a fool of myself for the hundredth time, and that wasn't part of the plan, initially. I'd be happier not having any kind of public prese...
We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
And I think it's that time. And I think if you just step aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over. You can maybe still use a plane. Though maybe a smaller one. Not that big gas guzzler you are going around to colleges and talking about student loan...
I don't really premeditate what I write my songs about; you know, they just kind of happen, and I can't start writing songs to please a certain group of people or propagate a certain message all the time. That's just not how my songwriting works - it...
I actually started trying to be a professional writer with novels, and I wrote two that exist and are around... kind of. But they never really went anyplace in particular. I still like them both. What it showed me was that you can spend years on a no...
I mean, it's not just one day you get up, bang, and you got Osama bin Laden. It's the kind of thing where an awful lot of people over a long period of time - thousands have worked this case and these issues and followed on the leads and captured bad ...
It took me a long time to make that leap to being a grown-up and responsible adult because I carried on being a child actor into my late twenties. It's OK to be precocious when you're young, but when you're a man of about 27 or 28 and playing a 17-ye...
Most Americans know nothing about the African forest, and it seems to them a very scary, spooky dangerous place. I've spent a lot of time in the forests of central Africa. I know they're beautiful places that contain a lot of different kinds of creat...
There's no neutral language about travel. Either travel is described in ways that make it sound kind of shallow or just glossy or silly or a way for rich people to spend their time; or else travel is often described in quite derogatory ways, you know...
I went to dinner with my mother-in-law and I just realized I was talking in sound bites to her and expecting her to laugh every time I said anything or be jotting something down in a notebook. So you have to kind of really have a talk with yourself a...
I'd gotten myself into a kind of journalism that wasn't really compatible with rearing an infant. I'd been a foreign correspondent for a long time and had this subspecialty in covering catastrophes. It had spoiled me a little because you have a treme...
The ventures that keep things light and fun, easy to understand, that have a compelling story, a sexy retail product, will have an easier time getting people to rally around them and contribute. A start-up doing something that's difficult to communic...
There are a lot of global decisions that you can make as a co-publisher, and only publishers can make those kind of decisions. At the same time, there are some things you can do only as a penciler or creator. I want to keep my hands in both pots, so ...
I've been thinking recently about all the qualities you need in order to be an actor. First and foremost, you've got to have a thick skin and give out an 'I don't give a monkey's what you think' kind of vibe, while at the same time really caring what...
There's so much material out there that's unnecessarily racist. It takes a shot at what is 'urban' or demonstrates blackness with some sassy, neck-jiving character that's not even relevant to the plot. I see it time and time again, and it doesn't mov...
I'm not tough, and I never have been. I suppose over the years I've built up kind of a veneer to protect myself because I have functioned on my own for a long, long time, and I have never had a lot of flunkies preceding me to clear the way.
