There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you feel, it's the failure that people project when something disappoints. You're back to ground zero, where there's no expectations, and that's where I like to be.
Someone once pulled me aside and said it was all right to succeed, and I realised that I knew what failure felt like, but I didn't know what success felt like. I've carried that with me ever since.
This dapper little mouse that wore such cute clothes and said such interesting things, yeah. I thought it was a great idea to have a mouse like that in your family, so now I get to see what it was like.
I actually have a life I said I wanted to have. I wanted to tell stories I want and be with my family. I'm whispering it, because I'm a quarter Jewish and afraid it's all going to be taken away.
I had all the material for a long time, but I was just too busy. Sometimes we'd sit around at home and sing some of these songs at family things, and everyone always said I should record them.
With regard to my family as I said nothing upon the subject before I may tell you that I have six children living, 1 dead and before I have the pleasure of seeing you I expect another.
I was actually the one who decided to move to LA. Mom and I were driving on Sunset Boulevard during one of our trips back to see her family, and I said, 'Can we just stay?' So we did.
I think you've got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other.
I took a job at the Walt Disney Company and after 18 months decided to go to business school at Harvard. I was awestruck by the campus. My first reaction was 'I don't belong here.' Then I said, 'I'm here; let's get on with it.'
Day baseball is now dead for all practical purposes. Sooner or later, the game will be played in its entirety at night, and as I've said before, then baseball will be squarely in the amusement, the entertainment business along with wrestling, midget ...
Every producer I have met has asked me to change my hair. I have always said 'No.' I finally change it for me... and now everyone in the business is like, 'You have to go back to having brown hair.'
I get a little cranky with the whole business about kids not having attention spans. This reminds me of the usual business of thinking that the next generation is hopeless. Every generation has said that about every younger generation.
When I met Bono at the Cannes Film festival while I was there for the film 'United 93,' he said to me, 'That's a great film, brother. Thank you for your courage in making it.' I plotzed.
I think all of us certainly believed the statistics which said that probably 88% chance of mission success and maybe 96% chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds.
When I read that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had disappeared - a state-of-the-art Boeing 777, said to be an incredibly safe way to travel - I waited patiently for the chance to learn what happened.
I've always said this and finally I had a chance to demonstrate it: The moderator should be seen little and heard even less. It is up to the candidates to ask the follow-up questions and challenge one another.
Winning that first game was so important; my mother always said that the first game of the second set was the chance to keep it going if you were ahead or change things if you were behind.
Like I said about Freaked, people tend to find these films, and I think that in the end the cool thing about a movie is that it can be sort of burnt temporarily, but then it's burnt into the fabric of your culture.
As I have said many times - I like Facebook. I think it is well built and run. It's cool. I think it is, in its next-step way, even visionary.
My sister and I said, Dad, are you doing to do anything about that? And he mentioned treatments other people sent him that he'd been working on. So we thought it would be kind of cool to give these guys a real script.
It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way you can do that is - like Verdi said - working with a file, every day, little by little, until the orchestra's collective qualities emerge.
