Daily life is better when it involves interactions with real people who have a personal investment in their labour, like shopkeepers, than it is with someone 'just doing my job' or the infernal self-checkout machine.
I would say a lot of the emotion in what I do is a sort of a thankfulness for those energies being around, because there's been points in my life when they weren't around, and it's a real sort of miserable existence.
I ask every Communist individually to set an example, by deeds and without pretense, a real example worthy of a man and a Communist, in restoring order, starting normal life, in resuming work and production, and in laying the foundations of an ordere...
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and beh...
I often say in my speeches, I say, 'It's rare in life that you get a controlled scientific experiment.' 'Cause you can't do controlled scientific experiments with real people, normally.
I have a no-apology policy. No apologies for jokes. I apologize in my real life all the time. I say ridiculous things, I make mistakes constantly. But when I'm on stage, I'm at a microphone... it's a joke!
It's pretty simple to me: we come from a really grounded world where anything you say could be the thing that the scene becomes about. We're always treating it as if we would treat it in real life. It's all observation.
The most spiritual place you can be in your life is when you're being very real, when you're not allowing everybody and everything to influence your decisions and your moods, and what's morally right or ethically right.
A lot of people believe that if everybody just did what they were told - obeyed - everything would be fine. But that's not what life is all about. That's not real. It's never going to happen.
I'm hoping that maybe I can be part of a disaster relief effort, something that's real life. That's kind of what I do anytime I stop working: 'OK, what's something that you've really wanted to do?'
One of the reasons I got into acting to begin with is that I was trying to figure out how life worked. It was interesting to me to try and follow how other people, real or imaginary, would deal with problems, because I was trying to deal with my own ...
As I look back over my life, before I had any real identity, I was a traveler. I grew up an Army brat, a runaway, an activist, and a musician. All my life I've been traveling.
I feel a real connection to Brooklyn, certainly, because I spent 20 years of my life there, but I don't think of myself as a Brooklyn artist any more than I think of myself as a male artist.
I think the hardest thing I've had to learn is that just because people might speak a certain way in real life doesn't mean it's engaging in the theater.
My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.
I did this scene in 'Lars and the Real Girl' where I was in a room full of old ladies who were knitting, and it was an all-day scene, so they showed me how. It was one of the most relaxing days of my life.
I have had a 'real' job for only four years of my life, which means I only collected a traditional paycheck for that very short period of time.
I think something that's very relevant in real life and that they don't portray enough on TV is that when you think 'Christian,' you think 'goody two shoes' - they have to look a certain way and do certain things - and it's just not true.
In real life, people are integrated into society. That's what happens in my books as well. Minor characters don't just walk in and spout lines, they interact and have an effect on the events. It's not an isolated universe.
I wanted people to see that I really am a real person. I'm not just some guy who was on a TV show, some guy engulfed in the Hollywood life. I'm just a normal guy when it comes down to it.
The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
