I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable.
If you can get humor and seriousness at the same time, you've created a special little thing, and that's what I'm looking for, because if you get pompous, you lose everything.
Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.
No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.
The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.
I started drumming around the same time I came across this part of American history. But there seemed to be a way forward playing drums. There didn't seem to be a way forward being fascinated by a piece of history.
Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.
I don't think nostalgia is a healthy modality. But nostalgia and a sense of history are not the same thing. Nostalgia is a dysfunction of the historical impulse, or a corruption of the historical impulse.
I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.
A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.
Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.
I don't shoot two films at the same time. I finish one character and get into another character because I change my look for every film. It's difficult, but I enjoy doing that.
I spend a lot of time on TV doing the same sort of thing. I found a niche in TV where people are willing to steadily employ me to do this one thing, which I put spins on and change.
The trick with computers I think, is to approach old and new things with the same reverence as you would like your favourite chair and not be seduced by the constant innovation otherwise you never do anything.
My approach is to start from the straightforward principle that our body is a machine. A very complicated machine, but none the less a machine, and it can be subjected to maintenance and repair in the same way as a simple machine, like a car.
Why did they keep changing guitars and amplifiers when they were perfect? They did the same things with cars, if you ask me. They forgot how to make them right, because they focused on style and bells and whistles.
Sometimes I feel like I'm not only the engine but the caboose. I have to be in the front car and pull forward, and at the same time run around behind and push everybody along with me.
I used to know Jennifer Love Hewitt. We lived in the same apartment building when I was about... jeez, I guess it was when I was doing 'Christmas Vacation', so I was about 13 or 14.
When I was a kid growing up, my dad being a football coach, he asked the same question of all the assistants that he ever hired: 'Is your goal to be a head football coach?'
My dad was part of the Oriole way. I think he was there 14 years in the minor leagues; I think seven of those years, they had the same people in place. So it was about continuity. It was about stability.
Every year of my life, my dad has sent me a Valentine's Day gift. Whether I was in the same house or across the country, he always sent something.
