I learned that the songs that mean the most to me are the songs that I write by myself. While there were people I wrote really well with, particularly Gary Nicholson and Delbert McClinton, and I really enjoyed the experience, I came away from it feel...
Robotic toys can be very interesting, but it is important that the toy not 'dictate' how the child should play with it. Rather, it should take its cues from the child and enhance, teach, and enrich the play experience. We incorporated some of these f...
Well, in some ways I had sort of the opposite experience of other people that are sort of dreaming of being in a rock band. I was dreaming of like corporate lunches and just like, and I'm not really joking. Like the whole idea to me was really appeal...
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of e...
Some of the greatest reality television we ever had was the moon landings. When you think about it, that was human emotion and people, unscripted, working with each other - and millions and millions of people around the world, glued to their televisi...
My grandparents went through a bad experience themselves; they invested money in a church and got burned - the pastor had his own agenda - and my grandfather lost interest in the church after that. That was when I had the option to not go. 'Grandpa a...
I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.
You can be chased home or hit or called names or spit on, and it's over. You have the memory of it, but it's very different from the emotional and psychological experience of feeling invisible, of not learning the confidence to stand up in class and ...
I think we need stories, and we need to tell the stories over and over and over not only to remind us, but to be able to have that clarity of experience that changes us, so that we know who we are now because of who we have been at some other time.
I come from playing sports. I compete, so I gotta be better than I was last year. I gotta get better, and that better gotta come from just growing. From learning new stuff to working on it, experience it in life, and failing.
But in the back of my mind I've always looked to the biggest-scale Hollywood movies. Because to me the most satisfying experience is of watching a movie, if it's done really well. And so that aspiration is always it for me, if I have the opportunity ...
My own experience is use the tools that are out there. Use the digital world. But never lose sight of the need to reach out and talk to other people who don't share your view. Listen to them and see if you can find a way to compromise.
The counterculture has nothing to do with Dolce & Gabbana having a 'Hippy Summer' or something. Street kids, and kids who want to live in any sort of counter-cultural experience other than what's being presented by the mainstream media or political c...
Working with Tim Burton is like a psychic experience -Tim waves his hands and says, 'I don't know,' and you go home and do it. He's the most articulate nonverbal person in the world. He doesn't say a word, and you know exactly what it means.
Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You have to lure people by getting them excited about a theatrical e...
How nice it would be to breeze through life and just brush things off. I never read reviews because I hate to lose more than I like to win; I experience negative emotions far greater than positive ones.
Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies,...
I think after coming off of 'American Idol'... people kind of expect you to just be awesome all the time, and we're still learning. I had a lot of stage experience, but it was in a 200-seat theater, you know - it wasn't thousands of people in front o...
'The Golden Compass' became a bad experience because the studio didn't have faith in the strength of the ideas of the novel, which is ironic because it's one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written, if not the greatest, and they took the religion...
A friend of mine had died, and I went for an audition. It was weird and cathartic: the producer was very excited about the piece, but my brain wasn't working, and it all seemed really pointless and fickle. I told them I didn't want to be there any mo...
I don't regard the fact that there's a disparity in test scores nearly as importantly as I do the need for diversity, because I know from long experience that test scores, though useful, are a very limited measure of things that matter in choosing st...
