I look at the careers of people I'm standing on the shoulders of. People like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan. These are icons I wanted to emulate, and I feel like they've been holding me up for quite a long time.
'Middle class' used to be synonymous with secure, with steady, with boring, because middle-class people were people who were pretty much safe from the time they first started work on through retirement and until their deaths. No longer.
And I realized, when I'd come in to the meetings with these corrugated metal and chain link stuff, and people would just look at me like I'd just landed from Mars. But I couldn't do anything else. That was my response to the people and the time.
People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an example; I don't read what's handed to me. People say, 'Here, here's your speech, or here's an idea for a speech.' They're changed. Trust me.
Some people have said that I can 'hear' a hit song, meaning that I can tell the first time a song is played for me if it has potential. I have been able to hear some of the hits that way, but I can also 'feel' one.
I think supporting casts in comics are missing. I think a lot of the time in comics, all we have are people in costumes talking to other people in costumes, superheroes talking to superheroes and supervillains, and that's it.
At the time the world was all upside down. The American people were beginning to move around a lot. The old hometown ties had been pretty much broken. The theme of Farmer Takes a Wife appealed to people. Everybody was homesick. And it sold and sold a...
The '54 World Cup was the first time the people got the recognition back after the second World War and felt like they are proud of something you know it brought people back together and you know now we can keep our heads up again.
When people are around us, they should leave better off than they were previously. Rather than feeling discouraged or defeated, people should feel challenged and inspired after spending any time with you and me.
Any time I claimed to be white, that would be unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense in people's minds. If I'm white, how can I walk through a department store and still have people scared that I'm going to rob them? Which, that can still happen.
I get mad at people who talk about traumatic job interviews, about going on one and getting rejected. I get rejected all the time and not only do I get rejected, but people have no problem being really specific about why I was rejected.
Middle and high school is a time of people telling you who you are before you know who you are. I was in advanced classes at Frick and Schenley, and people would say I was trying to be white because of the way I spoke. Or they'd say I was gay.
I think labels have been used alot during this election process to divide people, and at this point in time we really need people to come together, and be their own person, come with their own suggestions, and really solve the problems that we have f...
All my films have some kind of statement about something - but I have to coat it with entertainment to make it palatable. Otherwise it becomes a polemic, and people don't want to see it. If you're trying to get a message out to people, you've got to ...
A long time ago when I was very little, I dreamed about being on stage. Some people told me I would never be able to do it, so I only paid attention to those who told me that I could.
When was the last time someone told you 'Look at the bright side of things' when you were depressed, and you actually paid attention to them? Maybe some people do, but I sure as hell don't.
A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it's not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It's more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clu...
All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.
Britney Spears is a big influence. Huge. I think people thought I was joking about that for a long time. But when I was a teenager, there was a genuine connection with this sweet girl who also had this very sexual side that people didn't really want ...
If I make your workplace conducive to walking at lunch, or working out at some time during the day, or I get people to use the stairs more by creating incentives to do such, then people will start doing it naturally.
Obviously, people who commit crimes should be punished. Even people who steal socks and 'Snow White' videos should probably do time if they have priors, especially serious priors. But the punishment has to fit the crime, and the standard has to be th...
