It makes me sad that so many people feel they're only allowed to show their best face, while their humanity and vulnerabilities are forbidden and hidden. How else do we connect, but by commonality, by mutual understanding and truth in life's experien...
It's tempting to tether ourselves to the familiar comfort of the way things are, but fulfillment is often discovered in the unpredictable and unknown. We can serve ourselves and our universe, best, when we can take the journey that takes us from the ...
There's just nothing funnier or crazier than that - doing your Broadway debut as Spider-Man in 'Spider-Man' the musical. It was, like, the last thing I could have ever possibly imagined happening. I mean, I would tell people I was playing Spider-Man,...
It was a recession when I graduated, but I was so unequipped to have a job anyway, I don't think it would have mattered if the economy was booming. I think I was expecting bad jobs. But as it went on through my 20s, I began to wonder how things were ...
When you do a play, you have the kind of nightly feeling of accomplishment. But you also have the daily dread of the doing it every night. And because you're doing the whole thing every day, it's like climbing up the mountain every single night. With...
One minute you're a developing athlete trying to get to the top, then the next minute you do well and win a medal somewhere, and then it's all foisted on you. You never know when it's going to happen. You don't think about the media side of things wh...
As a child, when I lost things such as my precious pocketknife, I learned that if I prayed hard enough, I could usually find it. I was always able to find the lost cows I was entrusted with. Sometimes I had to pray more than once, but my prayers alwa...
I gave up so many things. It wasn't that I was out of control - it was just years of eating anything I wanted. I wouldn't eat a whole pizza, but if I wanted pizza two or three times a week, I didn't think to limit myself. So I just cut out all the st...
On 'Late Night,' it's like we're all in on the joke. That's what I wanted it to be. I'm not doing something sneaky. Inside jokes, I don't like those. We can all ride together, and everyone's on the same thing going, 'Aha, I know where you're going he...
It strikes me as a sound, honest statement for a prospective voter to say: 'Look, I haven't given this election a minute's thought, and it's just not fair for me to cancel out the vote of someone who actually gives a damn.' Indeed, it's not just soun...
Suffering can bend & break us. But it can also break us open to become the persons God intended us to be. It depends on what we do with the pain. If we offer it back to God, He will use it to do great things in us & through us, because suffering is f...
I do think that even with entertainment and telling stories, people in the entertainment industry have such a beautiful position in the world to speak about things that they're passionate about in a way that can grab people more than just sitting and...
I'd paint long strips of canvas and abandon them on the beach, or put bread out in geometric patterns for the pigeons downtown. I wanted people to find something nice and intriguing to puzzle over. Then I'd go back to see if the things were still the...
The most difficult thing about painting is the self-discipline. When I finish a job, I give myself a few days, but then I have to discipline myself quite fiercely if I want to do some painting that's worthwhile. Otherwise, you're just doodling. It's ...
The thing that probably trips me up the most are people getting tattoos of stuff that I've designed in my books. That always spins me out in a weird way. It seems like such a permanent commitment to something I've done. I don't know that I could do t...
The language that we use now impacts on the ability to vote, it impacts on the marketplace; instead of making things clear, it makes it more confusing. I think we need to stop using neutral language and speak in straighter terms. So when you agree to...
But 'I worked hard on this' doesn’t exempt you from criticism. Those harsh reviews aren’t about anyone being out to get me. It’s not an Authors vs. Reviewers thing. It’s people taking the time to express their opinions because they care about...
We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering th...
It is hard not to feel that there must be something very wrong with much of what we do in school, if we feel the need to worry so much about what many people call 'motivation'. A child has no stronger desire than to make sense of the world, to move f...
I don't know exactly where ideas come from, but when I'm working well ideas just appear. I've heard other people say similar things - so it's one of the ways I know there's help and guidance out there. It's just a matter of our figuring out how to re...
One thing I cannot stand is when people say, 'Hi, how are you?' and they don't wait to hear how I am. They're just going through the motions. I say to people: 'Keep it human. Keep it alive. Don't turn into a robot.' You have to hear what the other pe...
