People do not come to a Penn & Teller show to see a magic show. They just don't. They come to see weird stuff that they can see no place else, that will make them laugh and make the little hairs stand up on the backs of their necks.
Sometimes I'll go into a shop and speak in a different accent to see if I can pull it off. But then somebody will be like, 'Where did you say you were from again...?' And then I panic, and my accent dissolves, and I pretend like I wasn't doing it in ...
When you first come into Parliament, it's a daunting place because you feel you've so much to learn. Once you've been re-elected, you feel much more confident. It just gives you a bit of a boost.
The object of storytelling, like the object of magic, is not to explain or to resolve, but rather to create and to perform miracles of the imagination. To extend the boundaries of the mysterious. To push into the unknown in pursuit of still other unk...
I'm amused when Congress tries to place the blame on somebody but never themselves. I've never heard any of them ever say, 'I've made a mistake.' I do. I say I called it wrong. But they just try to find somebody to blame.
There are a handful of barbecue seafood shacks on the beach at Hat Nai Yang, which is a fabulous place to have dinner. It's very much run for locals and they serve the catch of the day, which might be lobster, white snapper or squid. It's ridiculousl...
Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no...
Besides…where Rincewind went’ – he lowered his voice – ‘trouble followed behind.’ Ridcully noticed that the wizards drew a little closer together. ‘Sounds all right to me,’ he said. ‘Best place for trouble, behind.
You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, or lamenting vindictive excesses in sentencing. Hollywood, supposedly a frothing cauldron of liberalism, has always been...
It is harder to get adult, character-driven material on television than it used to be, but there are lots of other places that you can go to sell it. If you can do it for basic cable or pay cable, we have those outlets.
Too many sit at the banquet table of the gospel of Jesus Christ and merely nibble at the feast placed before them. They go through the motions - attending their meetings perhaps, glancing at scriptures, repeating familiar prayers - but their hearts a...
I don't play favorites with people. My basic philosophy is that the only way to make the world a better place is by bringing something beautiful to every single person you run into at every moment of the day, so how can you play favorites with somebo...
He greatly valued his possessions, chiefly because they were his, and derived genuine pleasure from contemplating a painting, a statuette, a rare lace curtain - no matter what - after he had bought it and placed it among his household gods.
I wanted what women always want: permission. But he'd had that before this book was even written; it was, after all, the first thing I'd envied about him. It was arguably what enabled him to write the book in the first place. ("Envy")
Aside from a few master teachers that we have had over the years, this has been a completely local talent development. But people have started to come now from Chicago, we have a number of students from Chicago and different places of the country and...
I use the setting of a small rural Norwegian community - the kind of place that I know so intimately. I could never write a novel set in a big city, because, frankly, I don't know what it would be like.
I had never been to Texas. I'd been through Texas, but I'm so glad to be back in a place that's not L.A. or New York. To talk about Dallas, to talk about there being sweet tea on the catering table, it's rich and saturated in American-ness.
I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films.
I can understand going for Botox at 45-50, when you want to keep things in place. But I don't understand 25 year olds going for Botox or under the knife. You don't require it. Your skin is fresh, young. Why would you do that to yourself?
I like to challenge myself not to be negative, because it's easy to take comedy to a negative place and criticize the outside world. Trying to praise something through comedy or be appreciative and making jokes about it is more challenging than cutti...
On old maps, cartographers would draw strange beasts around the margins and write phrases such as "Here be dragons." That's where monsters exist: in the unmapped spaces, in the places where we haven't filled in all the gaps...
