So many people: Lucille Ball is the earliest incarnation of a woman I thought was funny, Joan Rivers, Roseanne, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radnor, down to current times, where you have Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Kristen Wiig.
I think sometimes my humor is extremely dry, and a lot of times I would say things that I thought were very funny but... I have a reputation of - people think of me as a very fundamentalist, humorless fellow.
When I decided to write 'The God of Small Things', I had been working in cinema. It was almost a decision to downshift from there. I thought that 300 people would read it. But it created a platform of trust.
God has to speak to each person in their own language, in their own idioms. Take Spanish, Chinese. You can express the same thought, but to different people you have to use a different language. It's the same in religion.
When Julia and I broke up and I was really scared to go into a market or anywhere because I thought, 'Oh God, everyone must hate me. And that wasn't the case. People said, 'I'm sorry this happened, man. Are you alright?'
'Bagdad Cafe' was a film that changed many, many people's lives... how they saw themselves and how they looked at their life situation. I thought I made a little movie. All the mail that I get is about how it changed lives, and that's wonderful.
I always thought on my own that what is a huge part of being an actor, or what made me a better actor, was just really living life. Not being closed in on life, but being more open to experiences and to people and taking risks and exposing yourself t...
I thought making speeches for money was a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company, as so many people who leave public life do.
I never thought of losing, but now that it' s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.
People take years learning how to act; it's a skill, not just a job. If I tried it out and thought I'd be OK, then perhaps I'd go for it, but it's not the kind of thing you can get into just because of your looks.
Years ago, I was performing, and people kept calling out for 'Puppy Love' and I just didn't want to. Then I thought I'd have some fun, so we did this insane heavy metal version of it. The applause was polite.
I have the greatest love for the rituals of organised religion - the sense of community and belonging it can confer to people. But me, I'm more a questioner than a follower; not by whim or fashion, but as a decision painfully arrived at after much, m...
When you frequently invest your time and energy in your own business, the need to mind other people's business would become a stranger in your thoughts.
I always knew I wanted to be a musician, and I always knew I wanted to write, 'cause the people I was listening to all wrote. I never thought it was an option to sing anyone else's songs.
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.
I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.
I was running since I was 10. Since grade one at school people looked at me and thought, oh gosh she can really run, she's a natural.
We sat around one night and thought that people are going to look back and say, I can't imagine there was a lot of excitement about HER going up!
I have a theory about Ireland, being at the edge of Europe. For 1,000 years, people didn't know what was beyond. But we thought about it - a lot. And that 'beyond' became internalized in our psyche.
I don't do much more than organise other people's ideas and insights and thoughts, and sort of harvest them, and inventory them and present them.
