I never felt I was quite the ticket academically. I always felt I had to put in an enormous amount of effort not to be disappointing. So I worked really hard, but at the time it suited me, because I didn't do very much else.
I have a friend who says that roles choose you at the time that you need them most, and you have to believe, as an actor, if you didn't get a part that you really, really wanted, and it went to someone else, it was because it was theirs to begin with...
You think you're looking at things all the time, but you're not looking at things, you're looking at what your brain is interpreting through light and color. And who knows what everybody else sees?
I always feel that most political jokes, if you're going to do them, you have to do them within the next five minutes, or else they're outdated. By the time you've got it to the point that it's strong, it would be 12 years old.
In Africa, listening is a guiding principle. It's a principle that's been lost in the constant chatter of the Western world, where no one seems to have the time or even the desire to listen to anyone else.
Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.
What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.
You get used to working with one choreographer. You kind of get stuck in that vein and you work your way out of it, picking up someone else's style, their flavor. It takes a bit of time.
Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.
Either we are in the universe to inhabit the eternity of our souls and grow real, or else we might as well dedicate our days to shopping and kill time watching talk-shows.
My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.
My process is to be by myself when I record. It's quite an emotional performance to pull off when someone else is in the room. I prefer to go away and have my own time with it, bring it in later.
They say it all started out with a big bang. But, what I wonder is, was it a big bang or did it just seem big because there wasn't anything else drown it out at the time?
People ask me all the time, 'How can I become a successful entrepreneur?' And I have to be honest: It's one of my least favorite questions, because if you're waiting for someone else's advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you're not one.
When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.
Sometimes I wouldn't give an interview because I didn't have the time or something else was more important. So they come up with a story which I don't think is always true, but they have to sell papers.
As a mother I think you often get so caught up in trying to take care of everyone else that you forget to take care of yourself. But I'm a much better wife and mother when I take the time to take care of myself.
You need to be proactive, carve out time in your schedule, and take responsibility for being the healthiest person you can be - no one else is going to do it for you.
I think filmmaking is a strange animal because it's anti-Democratic and collective at the same time, but I think it's all about not trying to know everything better than everybody else but making the right choices.
At one time they've been the most important thing to me. So I can't hear our records on the radio, I can't stand it, because they sound so out of what everyone else is doing.
It's time to wake up to the fact that you're just another avatar in someone else's MMO. Worse: From where they stand, all-powerful Big Data analysts that they are, you look an awful lot like a bot.
