My father was a negative person. He actually taught me to be negative, if that makes any sense. I remember him saying: 'You know there's no point in expecting anything good to happen because it won't.' I grew up in such a negative atmosphere.
I've been lucky to find people who want to work with me, whom I respect and like, but the truth is there aren't that many good projects out there. And we make way, way too many movies. So it's not always going to happen with every project. But I try ...
Everyone starts out desperately trying to make a hit, but some people are just more mistake-prone than others. I happened to be fairly mistake-prone. Of the 40 shows I made, I'd say ten were hits, which is a pretty good average.
As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what's happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don't seem...
I always felt the gifts you need as governor were more suited for my personality. I'm a good team player, but I'm not a policy wonk. In Congress, you need 218 votes to make anything happen. When you're governor, you're the CEO of the state. You estab...
I've got some great guy friends. They can start out as crushes. But when you realize something isn't going to happen, you make a choice whether or not the friendship is worth it. And it usually is. Then you can laugh about the fact that you used to h...
You can't even kill yourself if it isn't your time to go. People have no control whatsoever over what happens to them, and they are beginning to realize this. The future lies in the time of living. Your doing something will get you into tomorrow, if ...
And then as I got older, see, I think a lot of times with comics, your life kind of permeates your act. Whatever is happening in your life is what's going on on stage. So if you're angry in your life, then that's going to be on stage. If you're looki...
I love the way people dress at the races. I love people dressed to the nines during the day. That formal kind of daywear doesn't really exist anymore except at the races. Also I love the tuffs and the working classes being so hand in glove and relyin...
Cameras love pretty girls and craggy, old character men more than they can take craggy, old character women. But that's what's always happened. Work out how you can fit into it, and make that work. There are never going to be millions of parts for ol...
The claim that SpongeBob makes your child dumber is a causal claim. If you do X, Y will happen. To prove that, you'd have to show that if you forced the children in the no-TV households to watch SpongeBob and changed nothing else about their lives, t...
What we collectively decide about how to bail out our economy, how to pull our economy out of a ditch and what rules we put in place to make sure this problem does not happen again, will shape our country for the next 50 years. This is it.
The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleas...
Anxiety can make anybody act nasty, big or small. You will be tested for your strength, and if you are seen as too weak, you will sometimes be treated abusively, discarded and avoided. I'm not saying that this should happen. I'm simply describing hum...
A lot of people go off and have fun adventures, or hard adventures, and their impulse is to write about them right away. What really makes a difference is having some perspective on what happened.
I'm very lazy when it comes to making the original sound. I don't go through amplifiers and different compressors and signal parts. I just grab something, whether its an old guitar or a children's toy that happens to be lying around, and record it st...
I just didn't lock into being in the right role in the right big movie and it going huge. I did never really make the leap to hyperspace. Who's to say that it can't still happen. I just enjoy working, and feel fortunate to be doing the things that I ...
As a comic and as a nurse, it's important to look calm on the surface when you're absolutely crapping yourself inside. So, if someone is waving a machete at you, which has happened to me when I was a nurse, it's important to make that person feel tha...
Build your self-esteem by recalling all the ways you have succeeded, and your brain will be filled with images of you making your achievements happen again and again. Give yourself permission to toot your own horn, and don't wait for anyone to praise...
I understand that most iPhone users want a phone that can do other nifty things, not a general purpose computer that happens to make phone calls. Strict control over apps minimizes the chances that someone will find their phone hacked or virus-laden.
If I watch something, I want to be wondering what is going to happen next; I want to be engaged in a way that makes me ask questions and think about how I can relate myself to the characters and the issues that are there. But if it's just fluff, and ...
