I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?
I'm an e-patient: equipped, enabled, empowered, engaged. I'm no clinician, but I do everything in my power to help them, to play an active role in my own care, and even in the design of care.
With the Larry Bertlemann portrait, I started with a photograph that I could use for it. I built the drawing's identity to serve as a graphic identity. After a number of sketches, I went into my own abstract vernacular of drawn lines and shapes to cr...
Only with maturity did I come to appreciate my own Chinese roots: not just the food and the ancient history, but also the philosophy of child-rearing and the respect for education and knowledge.
See, that's the thing: I'm not one of those actors who thinks, 'God, I've got to improvise and make it my own.' No, my first job as an actor is to take what's written and make it work. And then, if they want me to improvise, I'll do that.
When I sit down to write a novel, I am exploring my own relationship with God, with the struggle between good and evil, my own purpose.
Everybody has a public life, and they have their own private life. Everybody has their secrets. Everybody has their own private, you know, agonies as well as joys. And that's what great drama, whether it's the movies or the theater, that's what it sh...
How much more must this be so in my own case for I am conscious not only of the great names and achievements of those who have preceded me, but also of the living presence of many of my masters and teachers.
As a lower-class kid, I was raised to think success would be owning stuff. Having that great job, too. Now I find my parents' dream was wrong. You never really own anything. And you're never really finished as a person.
It's great to go on your own and discover new things just for yourself, to meet new people and all that. If you're all on your own, then there is nobody there to guide you and you have to make all the decisions for yourself. It's quite liberating in ...
Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses w...
It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before.
Democracy can tie your hands in a rock 'n' roll band, you know? It can be a great thing, but if you've got a certain amount of vision and you write a lot of songs, it's sometimes better to have your own band and make your own decisions.
I am a great admirer of other actors, but I never compete with other actors. I always compete with what I did last, and I'm my own most vicious critic. So I'm always trying to do it better.
I had a great time investigating the pigments of different mutant fruit flies by following experimental protocols published in Scientific American, and I also remember making my own beetle collection when it was still acceptable to make such collecti...
You have to trust yourself, not research. Not testing. Testing helps, but you have to trust your own taste. If your taste says something isn't any good, don't let research rationalize that out of its own truth.
Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.
Surreal can be exciting and good, and it can be like living inside an alien landscape, and it can be completely interesting, or you can be alienated from your own life - inside your own life, it doesn't feel familiar any more.
I've got my eye on a few things to spend my money on. I've got my own bank card but I am really good with money. I don't spend too much at all.
I like fashion. My mum was a dressmaker, believe it or not, so the consequence of that was that all my clothes were homemade, and I looked like a terrible mess until I was old enough to buy my own. But I love good tailoring.
My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.
