Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The most challenging work and the best work I've ever done was in a thing I did for PBS called 'Lemon Sky', a play by Lanford Wilson. I think it's the rawest, most complex work that I've had to do, and the thing I'm most proud of.
It's my goal to help actors achieve their best work, and I think I speak the same language as actors, so I understand how they do it, and I just love being able to create the playground in which they build their beautiful sandcastle.
I spent 10 or 15 years doing visual effects and, if I learned anything from that time, it's that you do the best work when you let things go wrong and embrace the happy accidents. Then suddenly it feels fresh and you're somewhere new.
There's so little representation of people who look like me behind the camera that it makes you want to say yes to any opportunity out of desperation. It puts you in a situation where you can't make your best work. Diversity for cheap.
I've worked in network and cable on and off for a number of years, and you just understand what your parameters are. A lot of times, I think the best work that my team has come up with comes from having to deal with certain boundaries.
I feel responsible that everyone has a really wonderful experience and to do the best work possible, and to always know my lines and to always be on time and to bring a level to the show in terms of quality that other people will follow.
I believe that if creative people are open and generous enough when working with each other, a lot more can be learned and achieved by both parties. That's what it's all about, trying to produce the best work possible on any given project.
I always wanted to be the underdog. For me, as a portrait photographer, it's the kiss of death to become well known. I did my best work when no one knew who I was. People weren't threatened by me because they didn't think I was a big deal.
Vanity is something that will only get in the way of doing your best work, and ultimately if you're truly vain you care more about your work than how you look in your work. I actually consider myself a pretty vain guy when it comes to that.
Sometimes it just doesn't translate to people. You just move on, and you feel bad because people worked so hard on it and everyone loved it... Everybody was treated so well and was going for something and trying to do the best work possible.
I think there are shows that are long-running and successful, where some or all of the cast members hate each other, but I think it's a lot easier to have an environment where everyone feels secure and supported to do the best work possible.
I'm in the trenches; I do the best work I can always do. Having said that, the way that what I do converges with the outside world is fascinating to me. Because it ebbs and flows. People's interest and understanding, it changes all the time.
When I wrote 'The Rozabal Line,' I had no preconceived notions of what a commercial bestseller should be. I have always viewed 'The Rozabal Line' as my first love and probably my best work. The fact, however, is that it is my least read work.
But I think the one thing that I can say about us is that we're very consistent about certain things and part of that is our desire to do the very best work that we can and not rest on our laurels, or not allow formula to come into what we do.
Clearly, 9/11 would have to be some of the best work that I've done because I was working without a template, and that was very difficult. Having nearly been victimized by the north tower, it was difficult to remain composed and be informative.
Honestly, when you're making a movie, you never say, 'Oh, this one's going to suck and go straight to video.' When you're in it, you think you're doing the best work you can do. You're surrounded by people who are working hard. Everybody's hopeful.
So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles.
The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that, and then I put it out there and say to you, 'What do you think?' I hope that you think well of it, obviously.
See, what you're meant to do when you have a mid-life crisis is buy a fast car, aren't you? Well, I've always had fast cars. It's not that. It's the fear that you're past your best. It's the fear that the stuff you've done in the past is your best work.
I think my very best work came out when I was about 60, not when I was 20. I was publishing all the time when I was in my 20s, and some of those poems I still like. And there were a few after 60, and in my 70s, that I like. But they became fewer and fewer.
A lot of people don't know this about Wu-Tang, it started from a focused mind. I was given total autonomy to do whatever I want with them... They agreed, to me, to be a dictator for five years. And in those five years, it's considered some of our best work.
All I can do is do my best work, try to create the best kind of moment to moment reality that I can do. That's what I do. I'm an actor. And all the rest of it is like baseball. You hit the ball. Sometimes it goes in the hole. Sometimes it goes to the player.
Confidence and empowerment are cousins in my opinion. Empowerment comes from within and typically it's stemmed and fostered by self-assurance. To feel empowered is to feel free and that's when people do their best work. You can't fake confidence or empowerment.
I feel I do my best work when it's all there on the page, and I feel that the character is very vivid as I read the script and I'm not having to create stuff and trying to cobble together something. If I have to do that, then I don't entirely trust what I'm doing.
I don't think I ever got the hang of the writers' room. I love collaborating with people, but I really do my best work alone, and I think I would want to - if I did something again, I think I'd want to take total ownership the way Aaron Sorkin or David Kelley does.
Just because a woman is over 50 does not mean she no longer has anything to offer. If anything, we have so much more to offer! We have lived life, we get better with age. I do my best work now in my 60s. Sure, I could retire; but what would I do? Play Bingo? I think not!
'Privileged,' without a doubt, was one of the best work experiences of my life. Every crew member cried when we got canceled. But I was then given the opportunity to be in New York and on 'Gossip Girl' and spend the summer in a city that I've absolutely fallen in love with.
My job is to hire the best and brightest employees and empower them to do their best work. As a manager, I am not a mind reader nor an expert at every job function. Therefore, it is incumbent on all hires to feel empowered to tell me what resources they need to do their job.
The question was, in a sense, at Princeton Review, how much value was I adding as a public company CEO. I was adding less than other people might've... I think you want to move on when you've given your best work and then feel that you're not going to add as much value moving forward.
If I do a play, it's my vision, and everybody else is working on the production to support that. If I do an opera, I feel like part of my job is to support that composer, to try and create something that allows the composer to do his or her best work. In movies, it's usually the director.
Many of the greatest composers and musicians do their best work in extreme confinement but we are seeing it in other fields - uses of technology to link people together in networks to solve problems and almost certainly we'll get better ideas than we would from them just doing it on their own.
The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art you can create at that point in your life - a book that may only reach or move a few people but will seem to those people somehow transformative. That's the ideal; that's always the motivation.
If I feel that I'm not able to do my best work - whether that's my own fault or as a result of an editorial situation - then I need to stop doing it. I would rather not do something than do it badly or ineffectively. It's the only way I can live with myself and do right by the fans in the long haul.
In the '80s, it was difficult and frustrating to appear in the theater and TV again, even though I had some successful shows and hit records. Now, I have to say, the '90s are the best decade of my life. I've done the best work and, in a funny way, I'm enjoying the most success... more than in the '70s.
I really feel like my goal, and I don't always achieve it, is to do the best work I can do, and stay out of the results. Because ultimately, the result is not what the work is about. There are other people whose jobs are to focus on those results and maximize them, and that's great. Let them do their job.
Certainly as an actor, half of your work is not going to end up on the screen anyway, because in the editorial process, they need to cut to the other actor in the scene. Very often, your best work ends up on the cutting room floor, because it just doesn't work with the overall narrative drive of the story.
I'd like to do more TV stuff that is live action, but I am so totally happy doing as much voice work as I possibly can. Because it really is the best work. It's so amazing. You just show up. You don't have to look good. You don't even have to brush your hair. You work for a couple of hours, and you go home.
I am trying to do the best work I possibly can and making movies that will have resonance for years to come. I think if you try for an Oscar or a goal like that, the more people are going to see it as transparent. It's not on my radar. If it happens, great, but I'm happy to continue working as I am, really.
A lot of people think the best work I've done was nonfiction - the 'Brothers and Keepers' book. But I think of myself as a fiction writer. And I think, if my work is put in perspective, all the books would be a continual questioning of what's true and what's not true, what's documented and what's not documented.
I like being on a set where you can make decisions and everything is involved and are happy to work together to make the best work. For me, it's all about making the best work and creative people working together and all being respected and all having their opinions of what gives it the best quality is important.
And you know, whether it's drama or comedy, the best work is based on truth. It's just that, with comedy, the circumstances are just crazy-heightened, and you have these crazy things thrown at you. But you still have to do it truthfully, because that's where the humor comes from. So it's not that difficult to cross over.
More than conventional picture books, the notebook format allows me to leap from words to images, and this free-flowing back-and-forth inspires my best work. It reflects the way I think - sometimes visually, sometimes verbally - with the pictures not there just to illustrate the text but to replace it, to tell their own story.
I never know why shows succeed or don't succeed, which is why I look at it as, 'I'll do the best work that I can', and if the fans and people respond then I'm always really flattered and honored, and if they don't then I'll try and do something next time that they like better. But I have no idea what makes a hit show, I really don't.