What greatly annoys me is sometimes you see the short story being described as a training ground for the novel. Kind of like an apprenticeship. And in lots of ways, it's a far harder form.

I always like things to be as complicated as possible. I don't like an easy ending. I don't like when all the pieces get tied up. As a viewer who loves stories and storytelling, that annoys me.

The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy that pretense.

Maybe I over-do the 'not-80s' thing. It should be a part of my life that I've got some sort of pride in, but I've got this huge chip on my shoulder about '80s nostalgia - and it annoys fans sometimes.

People still text me to say that there is something about me in the paper, and what really annoys me is that if it's nasty, I then have to go and have a look, even though actually I don't want to know.

It still annoys me when I read really derogatory things about how a woman looks because you would usually not read these things about a man, and that still has the potential to put women off public life.

I like Toronto a lot, it's a good city. The only thing that really annoys me about Toronto is that you're turning Maple Leaf Gardens into a grocery store, which is absolutely nothing short of disgusting.

I think intellectualizing annoys me because it is the enemy of experience; you cannot experience the presence of God and analyze it at the same time. You can't analyze anything and experience it simultaneously.

Theft annoys me more than anything else. The purloining of effects from another magician. Some people think it's massive to steal the secrets of nuclear reactors, but to steal a card move is trivial. They're wrong.

If you go for an audition, you have a character description, and for the women, it's always about being beautiful, sexy. And for the men it's more about the character than how he appears physically. That annoys me.

I feel every time I score I prove people wrong. People doubt me all the time. They do that to all players but for me it's, 'He's too slow, he's too old.' It annoys those people every time I score and it drives me on.

But I think the only thing that annoys me about that is if I suddenly find someone on commercial radio or something like that, mimicking my voice or actions and trying to promote a product and pretending it's me doing it.

The only thing that really annoys me is when all of a sudden you hear yourself on the radio advertising Smith's tyre shop or Blenkinsop's jam. They simply can't do that. And in Australia, occasionally I have to take action.

One of the things that slightly annoys me in business is that we use words like innovation. Young people often think innovation is about doing something new, but actually it's not. It's about doing something better than your competition.

The longest-term thought many people have in D.C. is how can I be sure I don't do anything that so annoys either my base or my general electorate that I might not be able to get my job back? I don't think that's the right way to think about it.

It always annoys me when stars grumble about fans coming up to them in the street. I love it. These young stars today with all their airs and graces, they need to remember it is an honour and a privilege to make money from acting. How hard is it?

I knew nothing about wrestling! Sometimes that's a great thing, and sometimes that really annoys people in this industry but that's the truth. I had no clue how to wrestle. I had to learn everything, absolutely everything. To start from the bottom.

It annoys me when I phone a hotel receptionist in my own country, and they don't understand what I am saying because they don't speak English. I think that's wrong. It's nothing to do with being politically correct or incorrect; it's just not right.

I need to make things mine. It annoys me to buy something that is imposed on me. When I have a suit made, I go to the Sicilian tailor Alessandro Martorana in Turin. I like shorter jacket sleeves and often fold the cuffs up. It's more modern that way.

All my day is spent dealing with other people. When I come home I like it to be empty. The presence of others in my house kind of annoys me. I love coming home and shutting the doors. I feel brain dead. I'm relatively available, but not to live with.

It really annoys me when magazines put up these 'superwomen' with the perfect blow-dry, the perfect life - but nothing's perfect. People have a whole bunch of problems and it's how many solutions you can find to those problems as to how happy you are.

I consider myself something of a self-taught anthropologist. I try not to talk about something unless it's something I love. But if it's something that really annoys me, I fixate on it, learn something about it and then, when I'm onstage, it comes out.

The fact that I've lived this long is not really an achievement. Time passes; we age... it's natural. This is why it annoys me when a person watches a movie and tells me that it was 'time pass.' Would time not have passed if he hadn't watched the film?

It annoys me when contemporary films and television shows create artificial tensions that could easily be resolved by a quick email or the use of a search engine. 'La La Land' was guilty of this several times, as well as a more generalised aesthetic nostalgia.

I am what you might call abstractly anti-capitalist. For instance, I am suspicious of the old leftists who focus all their hatred on the United States. What about Chinese neo-colonialism? Why are the left silent about that? When I say this, it annoys them, of course. Good!

What annoys me about it is that your fate is always in somebody else's hands. It's always up to somebody else to decide whether or not they want you in their show and so the majority of actors have to play out a waiting game. The constant fear is that it could all end tomorrow.

Right now my mind is on the people who stole our instruments, and, specifically, the person with my guitar, which will no doubt end its days having Green Day songs worked out on it. A better fate was deserved - and while the reverence given to guitars annoys me, I shall miss it.

The trouble with writing for the web is that writing is about getting people to forget they're reading. Anything that reminds them they are reading, or which annoys or distracts them, bounces them out of the world. And the web, it seems to me, is all bounce. A very, very difficult medium to write for.

China is attempting the death-defying feat, which no one has attempted in the history of the world, which is to move a billion people out of poverty. When I speak to Chinese policy-makers, the thing that annoys them the most about Western policy-makers is that they're not given any credit for anything.

I do have a tendency to talk a lot at the poker table, which throws people off because they spend a lot of time trying to read me. But I talk a lot when I have a good hand and when I have a bad hand, too. Sometimes it annoys people so much they can't wait to get out of the tournament. And that can only be good for me.

I don't know about happy endings, because I don't think, eventually, anything is happy. You feel a bout of happiness with good news. Five minutes later, there could be a traffic jam or a phone call from an irritating relative or a weird thought, or it could be a tweet that annoys you, and your emotion will flip immediately.

When the crying child is immediately isolated, and it is explained to him at the same time that whoever annoys others must not be with them, if this isolation is the absolute result and cannot be avoided, in the child's mind a basis is laid for the experience that one must be alone when one makes oneself unpleasant or disagreeable.

What annoys me most is it is so easy to focus on negatives all the time. All you hear is a lot of people - whether it is industry leaders or politicians - complaining about everything. I don't deny things are not always perfect, but the stage it gets is huge compared with the simple things that make people happy, like winning a football match.

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