I've learnt that through life you just get on with it. You're going to meet a lot of dishonest people along the line and you say good luck to them. I hope they live in comfort. Then I start sticking more pins in their effigies.
When I start writing these novels, I go into them with a spirit of inquiry rather than to substantiate prejudices I had in the beginning. If you don't do that, you can't write good characters.
I believe in rules. I believe in artistic limitations, and I always have. I've always thought that setting out a set of rules before you start, and then being completely consistent with them, is the only way to make a really good film.
'Rent' was a special project for me. It was my first notable screenplay job. I worked with two wonderful directors on it, starting with Spike Lee in the summer of 2001. I wrote a draft for Spike and he was really good to me.
I can't begin to count how many times I have warned politicians and candidates to worry as much about the good coverage as the bad, because the more air they put in your balloon, the bigger the target when they start shooting.
I got divorced, which was not a good thing for a revivalist minister. It did not go down well. I'd already been banned from a couple churches for my jokes. So one day I woke up and decided it was time to start living for myself.
I was never any good at remembering dates, but now I hardly have to. When the first bulb catalogs get delivered and the hens start laying again, that's all the notice I'll need to know that winter has passed.
I could start a war in 30 seconds. But some countries spend 100 years trying to find peace. Just like good manners, peace has to be learned.
You've always got to have that inner confidence in you. That's where it all starts. You're gong to have good days, you're going to have bad days. You've got to have the same desire and try to get better each day.
What's nice about Twitter is that you've got that point of contact with your fans that artists have never had before. I think it's good for musicians. Just as long as you don't start tweeting things about your girlfriends or boyfriends - there's got ...
I don't even know why I'm saying this in an interview situation, but I always feel like I'm not good enough for some reason. I wish that wasn't the case, but left to my own devices, that voice starts speaking up.
If I'm practicing making up what the characters will do, it's never good. In fact, when I catch myself doing that, I try to get rid of that section, and try and let them start making the decisions.
An ideal day starts with putting on a good, smart, fun show where I learn something and ends with me fending off atomic knee drops from my two kids in our no-holds-barred pillow fight/steel cage matches. They are a ruthless tag team.
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
Spending when the math's not there and the numbers aren't there and if they look in the social security trust fund, it's filled with IOUs because the government's been pilfering it for years on end. We have to do something. We have to start having th...
To finance longer life spans, we must convince individuals to start investing now for the long term. But longevity should be an asset that can be levered, not a curse. They must understand that there's a cost to sitting in cash. No one talks about th...
The second one, the joint Truth and Friendship Commission, which we started now with Indonesia, that is the one that has been criticized; its terms of reference call for providing amnesty for those who cooperate in telling the truth. It does not lead...
The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you, so when you start trying to count them on one hand, you don't need any fingers.
I have a terrible fear of travel. Just before we go, I start to panic and tell my wife I don't want to go. It's ridiculous. But actually it's only when it's somewhere I've not been to before.
When I had just started 'Cheers,' my nerves were ajangle, to put it mildly. I was absolutely terrified. What you're learning is to not show the fear, and to ultimately overcome it so that the level of relaxation is commensurate with the level of tens...
I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know? And for the last 20 years - you've got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and then go on your merry way and start again, in a sense, and that's what I've been doing.
