Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.

The truth is, the personal ends up becoming part of your professional. As an actor, much of your work happens at home as you try things out on your family. Sometimes you stay in character unbeknownst to you and keep practicing.

I read a Bruce Lee quote that shifted how I'm trying to live my life right now. He said, "Some targets are only meant to be aimed at." Right? And I took that to mean a shift for myself from goal orientation to path orientation.

We are all equal in that we can all strive to become the best we are capable of becoming. We can always improve but we shouldn't compare ourselves to others. We get in trouble when we start trying to measure up to someone else.

'Rocket Science' is really where I fell in love with filmmaking, I think 'Camp' was incredible, but it was so bizarre, and I was trying to find my footing in this world where you don't have an audience for immediate validation.

I belong to you. You could do anything you wanted with me and I would let you. You could ask anything of me and I'd break myself trying to make you happy. My heart tells me this is the best and greatest feeling I have ever had.

The spiritual path is not a solo endeavor. In fact, the very notion of a self who is trying to free her/ himself is a delusion. We are in it together and the company of spiritual friends helps us realize our interconnectedness.

We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature - not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we're inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes inside, or some dust.

A philosopher may try to prove the truth of something he believed before he was a philosopher, but even if he succeeds, his belief never regain the untroubled character, and the settled place in his mind, which it had at first.

I don't know if I have a problem expressing joy, but the difficulty is in making an album, a piece of music that really does reflect life rather than the one dimension. I have a problem in trying to make a complete trip record.

To me, getting up every single night and trying to reach out to an audience, and trying to dig deeper and further in the play to serve the writer and to understand yourself in that context is how you continue to grow and learn.

If you're trying to convey a crucial emotional truth, you have to be in total control of the emotional pacing of the story, and if you can only strike one note in terms of tone then you're going to be quite limited as a writer.

I'm carded for R-rated movies. And I get talked down to a lot. When I try to go rent a car or buy an airplane ticket or other stuff adults do, I get "Okaaaaaay, honey." I remember when I was 18, getting crayons in a restaurant.

I've had a long line of failed television programs, pilots that were never picked up, series that didn't go very long. I've learned that there's really nothing you can do. If it's not in my control, I try not to worry about it.

I will build the wall and I will impose tough mandatory minimum - remember this - tough mandatory minimum prison sentences for deported illegal immigrants who try to reenter the country. They keep coming back and back and back.

Conscience is the still small voice that has been trying since the infancy of our species to tell us that we are evolutionarily, emotionally, and spiritually One, and that if we seek peace and happiness, we must behave that way.

My 'Movember' moustache was never going to be as big as Nigel Mansell's, but I tried my best. The amazing thing is that when you try to grow a moustache, you notice everyone else's. There are some amazing moustaches on the grid.

I don't spend that much time in the studio. When I first started doing music, I was in the studio every day just trying to build my portfolio. But now, even though I haven't totally mastered my craft, I'm at a pretty high level.

I didn't have nothing handed to me. It's a hard, long road getting to where I'm at. And I think the fans that have been down with me for a long time, they see that. They've been seeing me clawing my way to try to get to the top.

I try to paint from life, but I had such a miserable experience with Bonaparte, who wouldn't sit still and kept mumbling about catching a cold and something incoherent about Wellington , so I finally decided to work from photos.

When I make music, I try to make something that is super colorful and something you've never heard before, so when you hear the whole album, it's a good feeling. Musically that's what I aspire to do whenever I'm making an album.

I try to work hard. I'm really proud of what I get to do as a living. I still pinch myself. But I also know it's a craft, and I can get better at it and learn every time I do it. So I try to work hard no matter what the task is.

I don't know whether we will find ourselves in the cross hairs, pulled by the short hairs, or just trying to find the next inane hairstyle. But change is coming; it is inevitable. It is as steady and reliable as a ticking clock.

I'm the company philosopher and the burr in the saddle. I'm the one who says we need to try harder, improve the quality of our products, become a part of the political process, help elect people who are good for the environment.

I like making movies. I like the process. I like trying out new ideas, and if they don't work, they don't work. That's the reason I generated the money in the first place, to be able to try things. That's where I spend my money.

No one intimidates me because I'm not trying to do what you do, because I can't do what you do. I can only do what Mary J. Blige can do, so that relaxes me right there, and it gets me out of the competition and that whole thing.

When you perform live, it's a different trip - it's different energy. I just felt a conflict between both of the trips. I was trying to evaluate what it meant for me to be a singer/songwriter and what that whole thing all meant.

If there's a severe recession, the automatic stabilizers will come into effect, and we will still try to reduce the structural deficit, but we will not try to keep cutting the budget so that we keep worsening a severe recession.

Executives are afraid of losing control if subordinates try to roam too far. Conversely, hierarchy squelches talent by forcing rote standardization through the punishment of failure, a necessary accompaniment to experimentation.

To me, it's more important to take the 60-70% of people who really understand that there's a problem [of climate change] and get some percentage of them active than to try and stamp out the last embers of pre-scientific thought.

Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process.

Even going to college, getting my degree in Radio TV and Film, as I was approaching the time when you have to decide on a major, I kept trying to figure out what would be the best major to enhance what I am doing as a performer.

People believe that if you can shut your Tourette's off for a period of time, then you can always shut it off. I try to explain to people that if I spent my whole life trying to control my tics, that's all I would have time for.

I'm really not a partisan political person. I remember when I was in Washington they kept trying to get me to say whether I was a Republican or a Democrat. I just said, my politics are children. That's all I know anything about.

There's just so, so many overlooked R&B artists and I think it's really about, again, being sensitive to whatever you're addressing culturally. I just always try to have a sensitivity to it and what that might make someone feel.

It's not about having things figured out, or about communicating with other people, trying to make them understand what you understand. It's about a chicken dinner at a drive-in. A soft pillow. Things that don't need explaining.

Colours have their own distinctive beauty that you have to preserve, just as in music you try to preserve sounds. It is a question of organization, of finding the arrangement that will keep the beauty and freshness of the colour

Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation - that is what makes it revolutionary - but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims - that is what makes it realistic.

I don't know if there's a strategy really so much as, like I learned doing standup and had to learn fast, you always just try to give your favorite, strongest stuff as early as possible and you start with what you like the most.

Our focus is not on current politics, but students seem to be naturally drawn to this topic. This is understandable, when the U.S. is constantly trying to terrorize the nation with threats of war, students obviously take notice.

I am involved in Greenpeace. And I just recently completely switched my diet over to near-veganism. So you try to do little things that you can. I recycle every single day. Every single thing in my house that can be recycled is.

I think the fact that you have long - term relationships, this is a very unusual thing in the world, and I thought it was fantastic because you build up a trust. Each time you photograph the person, you try to do something else.

I just try to try to keep an attitude that I don't know what I'm doing. Not to the point where I'm beating myself up, but I just go in thinking that I have a lot to learn. And I hope I still have that attitude 30 years from now.

Don't try to be something you're not. If you're goofy, be goofy if you're serious be serious. And no matter what, give everything you have and enjoy it while you can because it can all be taken away from you at any given moment.

Whether at home or abroad, the task of statesman is to work with human nature warts and all, and to draw on instincts and even prejudices that can be turned to good purpose. It is never to try to recreate Mankind in a new image.

Anyway, how are you and Ramona doing?' Uh... you know. Pretty good.' Have you said the L-Word yet?' The L-Word? You mean? Lesbian?' Uh... No. The other L-Word.' ?' Okay. Uh, It's "love." I wasn't trying to trick you or anything.

When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.

One thing you try not to do as a father, as a coach, is pressure your son to do something that you've done. You don't just keep saying, "this is what I've done, this is what I've done." You have to take a little piece at a time.

I don't have one role that I'm particularly fond of doing, and I don't really look for it to differ all the time, but I will try anything and do anything. If it's a role I connect with, I'll go for it, no matter what's involved.

If you're going to make a big wave, you have to be totally unified with everything that's happening... Maybe in the moment of having to know everything all at once you burst through the barriers of trying to put things in order.

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