I don't just want to be someone who hits the ball 100 per cent every time. You can play with freedom and still mix up the pace, mix up the spins and everything like that. That's what I want to be doing, because you get into that very one-dimensional kind of tennis if you don't work on slicing and coming into the net.

Some of the greatest shows in history - 'Seinfeld,' 'Everybody Loves Raymond' and 'House' - had puny starts but the benefit of schedule protection, increasingly scarce in today's DVR world. Cable nets can tolerate small ratings, building hits in progress like 'Breaking Bad,' or marathon their way to a 'Duck Dynasty.'

I listen to a wide range of music, from country to pop to alternative rock, as well as Indian music. You know, what excites me are new ideas. And with a lot of the international hits - from Lady Gaga to Rihanna and others - you'd find excellent production and groundbreaking ideas that lift the music to a greater realm.

Hunger is a deep concern of mine, and I feel that no one should go without food in this world as long as there are caring people to lend a hand. I've had to struggle in my past and I know what it's like to go without, so I try to do as much as I can to help bring awareness to an issue that hits very close to home for me.

I don't go for holidays or celebrate my success because I know nothing is permanent. I don't let it get to me - like I am India's top director with too many hits. If that happens, I might lose the connect with my audience. The day I go wrong, they will run away from me. I want to be like an assistant director all my life.

What people fear most about tragedy is its randomness - a taxi cab jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian, a gun misfires and kills a bystander. Better to have some rational cause and effect between incident and injury. And if cause and effect aren't possible, better that there at least be some reward for all the suffering.

Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria. Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds. Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that, I was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.

The toughest opponent is me. A lot of times, you don't want to train. You don't want to box. Sometimes, life hits you to the point where you don't even want to live. You have to fight with that person. You have to make yourself wake up in the morning. You have to make yourself watch your weight. That's how I fight with that person.

We speak of 'software eating the world,' 'the Internet of Things,' and we massify 'data' by declaring it 'Big.' But these concepts remain for the most part abstract. It's hard for many of us to grasp the impact of digital technology on the 'real world' of things like rocks, homes, cars, and trees. We lack a metaphor that hits home.

Music's always going to evolve, and we can't really stop that, so we have to figure out what's the next thing and how we move towards that as opposed to just being like, 'Oh, cool: let's just continue making tear-out EDM hits that are gonna last 2 months, and then somebody else is making the exact same thing under a different name.'

Even the dullest bird or face becomes interesting when you give it a good look in the wild/flesh. The way the shadow drops across the cheek, the light hits an eyebrow, etc... there are many more angles, positions etc. than you can ever imagine. My heart always makes a little jump when I see things in birds or faces that surprise me.

Garage-rock eccentric King Khan may be from Montreal, but his heart is almost a thousand miles away, throbbing from Atlanta to Castle City, Mont., until it hits cardiac arrest in Kalamazoo. Khan and His Shrines warn that this so-called 'Land of the Freak' is where only the strong survive, but it's a strength that can't be measured in muscle.

I would not understand when people will tell me that 'Tum hi ho' has got more than 1 million views on YouTube. I was like, 'How does it make a difference?' Later, I would go to YouTube and see songs of Rihanna, Enrique etc. and would see their hits. Then I came to know the importance. Nowadays, you can judge from these sites how big is a sing.

The 'victim to victory' theory is that, if you listen to the radio, a large percentage of the hits are... about victim to victory, like, 'I'm having a terrible time.' And then the pre-chorus is, 'I don't know what's gonna happen next.' And the chorus is, 'Now I'm brilliant, and everything is great, because something happened to make it great.'

When you first start out in the music business and hope that you have a couple hits, the ultimate payoff is to be standing in front of all those people who are singing it back to you at the top of their lungs. And you know by the way they're singing it back that it's affected their life in some way. That's the ultimate reward as an artist for me.

I appreciate all the kids who come up and enjoy my play at OU. But everybody giving me their opinions is where I draw the line. If it's someone who hasn't been there before, I really can't handle it. It's 'Slide more.' 'Don't take as many hits.' 'Get out of bounds.' I know they have my best interests at heart. I just have to remind myself of that.

Anthony and I are putting together a company where we won't lose our jobs based on quarterly earnings and can afford to play a longer game. That short game is what creates a glut of mediocrity in the market because people are desperate for hits, and it puts so much pressure on executives to deliver them. We will take that pressure off the artists.

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