Carl Sagan always used to say that when he was trying to explain something to someone, he would go back to that time when he didn't understand it, and then he would retrace his thought steps so that he could make it absolutely clear, and that's one of the infinite number of things I learned from him.

During 'Hawthorne', I was constantly trying not to be too outrageous and keep it serious. This has been so refreshing for me because it's such a good outlet for the inner me to just be. That's the whole point of 'Glee' anyways - to just be who you are and that's enough. I really feel that way on set.

Each one is different. Each project is different. Some are silly, some are not. Some are more realistic, some are not. Some are overly dramatic, some are not. You've just got to try and find the thing that's most engaging and entertaining in whatever way, shape or form, and it's different every time.

What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

One expect summed it up by saying: "Trying to cure traffic congestion by building more roads is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt." One study of 30 California counties over several decades found that, for every 10% increase in road capacity, traffic increased by 9% within four years.

What you win a guy with is what you keep him with. If you win him with your body than you'll have to try and keep him with your body. The problem is that every girl in the world has a body, so any girl in the world can lure him away. But who YOU are as a woman... No other woman in the world has that.

The only thing you really have to practice is your ability. And this is something I do all the time. I try to teach my hand to do what I'm hearing in my head at any given second. I don't sit around and practice scales. I sit around and just try to make sure my hands are following what's coming to me.

I'm constantly trying to deconstruct what I see and to show its beauty and its attraction. I use bright colors and strobes to get that full reflection. I want to acknowledge and reference the attraction of wealth. But I'm also looking for the layer that reveals how wealth doesn't fulfill its promise.

I am much more likely to care about someone trying to be funny and give them some credit for whatever he or she did that was remotely funny than I am to be mused by somebody declaring this isn't funny, that isn't funny, this sucks. If you want to write humor, you're going to have to get used to that.

It's for upset stomachs,' Dylan said, trying to hide a smile. He pointed to the words in the box. 'It's to reduce gas in your digestive system, not to create more gas to make explosions.' Gazzy's face fell as Iggy said. 'Really? Gazzy take it! Take the whole box!' 'I second that emotion!' said Total.

People will try to copy what they can see, which is the final product or service, but it's much harder to see (and copy) all the intricacies of the business model that allows you to create, capture, and deliver value. And that's what you need to get right to really jam something down people's throats!

Speeding is like drugs. It makes everything come at you fast, and when you go back to normal driving, safe driving, prudent driving, it seems boring. That's the danger of drugs. At first it's intoxicating, but then the rest of your life you're trying to find that very first time. It never is the same.

There have been so many individuals who have really put a lot on the line. That they've sacrificed so much to try to protect the principle of source protection in the journalism world. And I think Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks, and Sarah Harrison have really been extraordinary in standing up for that.

It seems to me a worthy goal: try to create a representation of consciousness that's durable and truthful, i.e., that accounts, somewhat, for all the strange, tiny, hard-to-articulate, instantaneous, unwilled things that actually go on in our minds in the course of a given day, or even a given moment.

A Democratic strategy firm is trying to help them out. They did a new poll from - it`s a global strategy group. And they did a poll of both base Democrats and swing voting Democrats, trying to determine how to best harness this energy [ of leftist anger]. And maybe more importantly, how to message it.

My second biggest mistake in life, for which I have no one to blame but myself, is having accepted payments in cash from Karlheinz Schreiber for a mandate he gave me after I left office... My biggest mistake in life, by far, was ever agreeing to be introduced to Karlheinz Schreiber in the first place.

I would like people to recognize in looking at my story that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. It's not the environment, it's not the other people who were there trying to help you or trying to stop you. It's what you decide to do and how much effort you put behind it.

"Hello," he greeted her cheerfully. "You must be Alan of Trebond. You're very hardy to have made it this far the first day. Has anyone said what we try to learn in here?" Alanna said the first thing that came to her lips. "The only thing I know is that I jump when I'm told to and I have no free time."

Later, when I was at Caesar's Palace, and [Joe and Gil Cates] were trying to get me to have opening acts for the show, they gave me a list of people, and Rosie O'Donnell was one of them. I said, "I don't really need any opening acts. I have funny stuff in the show, and I do a lot of comedy and stuff."

I've always thought that you just make everything as best as you can, and then, one day, people will look objectively at what you do, from a distance, and see its quality. All you try to do is keep the standard up so that, one day, when I sit back and I look at it all, I can feel really good about it.

We didn't make money but we never lost money. We'd sit around Times Square with fliers, walk around the Village and try and get people to come. Now you'd just tweet it, but that was the beginning of emails, or the beginning of me doing emails - I'm sure there were people in 1986 who were doing emails.

I procrastinate in spades. In my defence, I also try to have all other distractions solved before I can concentrate on writing. My small theory is that to write for three hours, you need to feel like you have three days. To write for three days, you need to feel like you've got three weeks, and so on.

The Beatles are now history, and it would be unhealthy to try to make my way as a former member. I must admit I occasionally listen to our records, but usually it's not deliberate. I'm more concerned with the present, with working out my own individual style and producing something new and worthwhile.

Music is like a conversation. One person says one thing that speaks with a harmonica, with a bass, with a drum. They're all conversating, and we're just trying to find a way to make conversation rather than blah, blah, blah. But it's not really so hard a thing to do if you know the way to approach it.

I've sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don't need sauce. I know he doesn't even want you to pour sauce. And I've seen customers come in and do that, and I've seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I've seen him die a little inside.

I feel like I have to be a walking encyclopedia - I constantly have to be explaining myself - especially when I do table work or when I'm talking to a dramaturg about, you know, the culture, but also what I'm trying to do as a writer in this particular play. You know, you have to protect yourself too.

She said that by introducing me to all these great things, Mary Elizabeth gained a “superior position” that she wouldn’t need if she was confident about herself. She also said that people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don’t, nothing will work out the way they want.

Therefore, no matter how the world makes out in the next few centuries, a large class of readers at least will not be too surprised at anything. They will have been through it all before in fictional form, and will not be too paralyzed with astonishment to try to cope with contingencies as they arise.

John Kricfalusi is very talented; he used to really piss me off. But I did good work, you know? The Ren & Stimpy show without me was totally unsuccessful. So if there's anybody listening out there with any doubts about what I can do for a show: Try me. The thing is, I wasn't about to stop doing a job.

Gymnastics, you get one shot; acting, it's like, do it again, do it again, do it again. So that was the one thing that I found very different. You're allowed to get different tries and you're more expressive in a way when you're working with people. In gymnastics, you're so on your own and individual.

War is big business. It's a lot of money going to and fro, and unfortunately a lot of angst, and a lot of fear, and a lot of doubt. And eventually a lot of wonderful people, like soldiers, like men and women that are out there trying to do the best they can, they come back being wounded on many levels.

If we keep kicking the can down the road, if we follow the president's lead or if we pass the Senate budget, then we will have a debt crisis. Then everybody gets hurt. You know who gets hurt first and the worst in a debt crisis? The poor, the elderly. That's what we're trying to prevent from happening.

I try to explain to people that the only way to be cool is to be who you truly are, and the only way to live life is to do the things that you want to do and be the person that you want to be no matter who that is or what that is or how you have to do it. That's the only way you can be genuinely happy.

There is one common philosophy, one thing that you can do no matter who you are or what you look like: You can actually get passionate instead of remaining cool or instead of trying to look like everybody else. You can - you must - immerse yourself passionately in who you are if you want to have style.

I love the traditional music of all our islands - Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales , but I suppose I'm viewed pretty much as an English songwriter and I'm going to try and do an English album, and I wouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed to do Scarborough Fair and Spencer the Rover and stuff like that.

I can never be who I was. I can simply watch her with sympathy, understanding, and some measure of awe. There she goes, backpack on, headed for the subway or the airport. She did her best with her eyeliner. She learned a new word she wants to try out on you. She is ambling along. She is looking for it.

The role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures, and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore, to make them easier for global corporations to control. Global corporations are even now trying to commodify all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention indigenous cultures.

I love the balls-to-the-walls rule-breaking approach the Beatles had in the studio (which I emulate), although I don't try to make my songs "sound" like their songs. But every time I crank a knob of some piece of equipment, or plug an instrument into the "wrong" amp/effect, I am channeling the Beatles.

Never try to get into society, so-called. Those who try seldom get in, and if they do edge through the portals they always feel clammy and unworthy when under the scrutiny of the elect. Sit outside and appear indifferent, and after a while they may sent for you. If not, it will be money in your pocket.

I've had a tremendous career and I get more phone calls from people who've been on 'X Factor' asking how they get on the ships. The ships are a very lucrative job for any singer and I would advise any singer to go and work on them and try it for a while. If you are not good enough, you will not get on.

I don't have any TVs with their over-the-air receivers connected in my house. But when I'm in a hotel room or other places that have a TV, then I turn it on and flip the channels just like everybody else. I'm not immune to the lures of television. I just try to stay away from it because I like to read.

Trump erases the ability to recognize suffering and to try to understand the conditions that produce it, the ability to become a moral witness in the face of injustices. Trump erases that. Trump appeals to a population in which that becomes irrelevant. And that is so dangerous, at this particular time.

We needed to make a sound that's not gonna fit in with everything else - we wanted to make something that was completely unique and individual to us. We spent a lot of time trying to make a sound that was a One Direction sound. At first it was quite hard to do that, but I'm really happy with the sound.

I actually am fairly uncomfortable about it, even if our firm stipulation was that they cannot tell us what to do. We are simply doing what we do anyways - securing software - and they have no say in the matter. I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn't get built.

Different scenes call for different acting styles. The kinds of scenes I like most are the ones where you just bury yourself in there. So I wouldn't say that's the only way to be funny, but that's my favorite way to play stuff, to try to put myself in a situation where that kind of acting is necessary.

It's not difficult to take care of a child; it's difficult to do anything else while taking care of a child. Trying to clean up the kitchen after you've had a baby is a nightmare because you have to wait for the baby to be asleep, you're exhausted, and you really don't want to clean up the kitchen now.

I try to communicate with the musicians the way I communicate with the filmmakers. I'm not going to say to them, can we be a little bit more presto here. Hang on, this should be a bit more exciting, or I try to explain the scene to them, or I try to explain the context the notes are supposed to live in.

I learned a long time ago with you that folks who were trying to be kind would rather do it with a macaroni-and-cheese bake than any personal involvement. You hand off a serving dish and you've done your job - no need to get personally involved, and your conscience is clean. Food is the currency of aid.

And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history.

When I meet people I try to make a joke out of my occupation, explaining that what I do all day is sit alone in a darkened room, flicking through some pages, jumping on a treadmill now and then. I keep my serious work as a writer private, but that doesn't mean it's not serious work - quite the opposite.

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