Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't know that Brandy [Burre] would ever categorize herself as being trapped, but I felt like I saw her being trapped. When she's cleaning the room and she puts the labels on the toys, that was something that my wife, who's also friends with Brandy, was very adamant that we try to capture. My wife said that showed to her Brandy's creative outlet because she can't be creative in the ways that she used to be or that she maybe wants to be in the future.
You see, Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler. And a lot of people know it but they don't want to get involved. So they're just backing off and they're trying to blend into the invisible hoping nobody ever comes for them or notices them. "Watching Donald Trump's rise, I now understand. Leave aside whether a direct comparison of Trump to Hitler is accurate. That is not my point. My point rather is about how a demagogic opportunist can exploit a divided country."
The more readings a novel has, even contradictory, the better. In journalism, you talk about what you know; you have provided yourself with records, you have gathered information, you have performed interviews. In a novel, you talk about what you don't know, because the novel comes from the unconscious. They are very different relationships with words and with the world. In journalism, you talk about trees; in the novel, you try to talk about the forest.
By trying to adjust to the findings that it once tried so viciously to ban and repress, religion has only succeeded in restating the same questions that undermined it in earlier epochs. What kind of designer or creator is so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of designer or creator is so cruel and indifferent? And - most of all - what kind of designer or creator only chooses to "reveal" himself to semi-stupefied peasants in desert regions?
I'm from a Lebanese-American family. And I've been had lot of contacts and - with Arab-American community, especially Arab-American filmmakers and actors and so forth. It's a community that, a minority that really hasn't been heard from enough. And so many of the stories that are told about Arab-Americans these days are just negative portrayals in the news, but also in television and film. So we're - we set out to try and offset some of those stereotypes.
After a while, being so honest and so vulnerable on the page ends up affecting my own kind of self possession in the world, because I am not afraid of myself and my own thoughts. I think so much of being a woman, of being a social being, of being polite, is quieting those thoughts. There's so much we try not to say as we go through the day. There's a lot of tempering and self-editing. It is a relief to make writing that space where I don't need to do that.
I'm always happiest trying new instruments - and honestly enjoy playing, say, the glockenspiel with Radiohead as much as I do the guitar. I think regular touring has forced me to play the guitar more than anything else, which is why I'm probably most confident playing that. And whist I'd be lost if I couldn't play it too, I dislike the totemic worship of the thing... magazines, collectors, and so on. I enjoy struggling with instruments I can't really play.
We try to use obvious Canadian touches whenever we can, and I'm really proud of the way we use Vancouver for its production value. Nobody is pretending that we're not shooting in Canada, which is really important to me. The other wonderful thing is that ABC has bought us, but they air us after CTV has had the full season air on Canadian television. That's another thing that I think is really a nod towards the importance of us acknowledging our own industry.
In an argument, you may silence your opponent by pressing an advantage of strength or of wealth, or of education. But you do not really convince him. Though he is no longer saying anything, in his heart he still keeps to his opinion, the only way to make him change that opinion is to speak quietly and reasonably. When he understands that you are not trying to defeat him, but only to find the truth, he will listen to you and perhaps accept what you tell him.
There's not a second of my time on tour where I'm not engaged with something. It is the hardest job - a great job, and I love it - but truly the hardest job I've ever had. There's no time away, there's no time off, and it's so exhausting. I drive myself around in a van, and I don't have the money or infrastructure to do it differently, and I'm involved at every level. I feel like I'm just collecting info, and can't wait to get home to try and process these.
The ideas of non-duality and mindfulness that I address in my works are things I try to practice in my daily life. Both in and outside of the studio, it's about trying to be fully present, to accept things as they are, to frame your experience in terms of a continually unfolding moment. I feel like that's directly reflected in my formal approach: utilizing a literal use of materials, emphasizing the more ephemeral aspects of the artistic process, and so on.
You have to find the tone of the piece and modulate that. There are ways to indicate that - I try to incorporate the biggest range I can within the story, going from humorous to serious without it being jarring. That's the hardest part, to keep that balance. It requires being constantly aware of where you are in the story. You can't really do that in a movie: You can't slightly modulate the tone by the way the character's eyeballs look in one certain scene.
I love to try to understand first principles and be guided by that. But then, enrich them, because they won't last forever, just like everybody thought Newton had all the answers. And you probably read that, in the last of the 19th century, Harvard and others were discouraging people from going into physics because we have all the answers. And right after that, of course - we have - all this stuff is thrown out the window. And now we have whole new answers.
I'm not trying to say I accomplished nothing, I'm just trying to say that at this point in my life, I don't want to look at what I've accomplished and hold it like it's my trophy. I've got so much more to do; I don't want to put that gold medal around my neck yet. When I accomplish ten times what I've accomplished already, I'll start thinking about that. But a better way to put it is I kind of forget about it. I do it and I forget about it. And I just work.
Could we bring ourselves to feel what the first spectators of an Egyptian statue, or a Romanesque crucifixion, felt, we would make haste to remove them from the Louvre. True, we are trying more and more to gauge the feelings of those first spectators, but without forgetting our own, and we can be contented all the more easily with the mere knowledge of the former, without experiencing them, because all we wish to do is put this knowledge to the work of art.
It's like you might have some great scene that you love but for some reason - and you can't necessarily put your finger on it - the movie's not working or it seems slow or ponderous in some way, and even though it has your favorite scene in there, actually the favorite scene is the culprit. That's the painful thing about editing, is trying to locate those things that are holding the movie back and then having the guts to cut them. And it is painful to do it.
If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.
I listened very, very carefully to the world around me to pick up the signals of when trouble was coming. Not that I could stop it. But it made me observant. That was helpful when I became a lawyer, because I knew how to read people's signals. When a witness hesitated, my mind would race to the conclusion that he was trying to hide something. What was it? I'd dissect the story in my brain and nine times out of ten figure out a hole they were trying to avoid.
Considering that knowledge of the chemical as well as the optical principles of photography was fairly widespread following Schulze's experiment (in 1725)... the circumstance that photography was not invented earlier remains the greatest mystery in its history... It had apparently never occurred to any of the multitude of artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who were in the habit of using the camera obscura to try to fix its image permanently.
For the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from the standpoint of someone standing aside from it—as if it were quite other than himself—and then trying to grasp it. But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on the realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process.
The regular division of the plane into congruent figures evoking an association in the observer with a familiar natural object is one of these hobbies or problems...I have embarked on this geometric problem again and again over the years, trying to throw light on different aspects each time. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if this problem had never occurred to me; one might say that I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why.
Very well." He sat cross-legged on the floor of the cage. "You haven't run off so you want to talk. I will hear your explanation now." "Really, Your Majesty? So good of you to condescend. I'll try to use small words and go slow." "You're wasting my time. I know Jim betrayed me and you're covering for him. This is your chance to dazzle me wih your brillance or baffle me with your bullshit. You won't get another. When I get out, I won't be in the mood to listen.
I usually try to connect with young filmmakers over the phone so I can hear them and just pick their brain as to why they want to tell the story. And usually, I'm on board. I go, "Yeah, I'd love to help. And I just need to know why you want to do this,' and it's usually an easy process because a filmmaker usually reveals his or her heart in telling the story. And that's why I'm pretty much of a softy when it comes to helping along the young ones along the way.
I want my children to have access to something that looks beyond what I call the tyranny of now. You read the paper, everyone talks about that thing [in the news] that day, and all the subconscious really important stuff that's going on is being neglected. The beauty of history is that historians have the ability to find patterns, the big picture. When you make a movie, you try to find that. I'm doing in the cinema what historians try to do in their own media.
If somebody asks me about the themes of something I'm working on, I never have any idea what the themes are. . . . Somebody tells me the themes later. I sort of try to avoid developing themes. I want to just keep it a little bit more abstract. But then, what ends up happening is, they say, 'Well, I see a lot here that you did before, and it's connected to this other movie you did,' and . . . that almost seems like something I don't quite choose. It chooses me.
If you want to be an artist, go to every art gallery, if you want to be in movies, see movies! You have to participate in whichever world you're trying to enter! You have to know what's going on. You can be the best artist in the world but if you don't know one thing about which gallery to go to, you're never going to get it shown in the right place. Learn a little bit about the business of whichever art you're trying to get into. Without it, you will be lost.
I sometimes feel that I am trying to dig in the world around me. I'm involved in another kind of archaeology to look for another kind of truth, and the moment I find, the moment I am separated from that life, the moment I am sort of in a world, every time I have gone out and performed in the, in the cinema for example, if you do two or three films on the trot you suddenly have this impression that you're becoming separate or separated from the world around you.
When bow-hunting, you find you get closer to the woodland critters. The flora and the forest floor becomes clearer. You look at things more closely. You're moreaware. You know the limited range of the bow is only 40 yards or so. You must try to outwait that approaching deer. Careful not to make the slightest movement or sound hoping that your scent won't suddenly waft his way. That's when you'll know for sure and appreciate deeply what bow-hunting is all about.
When there's more lows than highs and I'm not just talking financially, it may be time to see what else is out there for you. Even at this point, I am open to the possibility that there may be another chapter on the horizon and I trust that I'll know in my heart when it's time to close the chapter on this one. I am much more than just an actor. It is what I do now and I try not to get boxed in by the belief that that is all I have to offer the world as my work.
Turbulence.” This is what pilots announce that you have encountered when your plane strikes an object in midair. You'll be flying along, and there will be an enormous, shuddering WHUMP, and clearly the plane has rammed into an airborne object at least the size of a water buffalo, and the pilot will say, “Folks, we're encountering a little turbulence.” Meanwhile they are up there in the cockpit trying desperately to clean water-buffalo organs off the windshield.
With every character you play you're always trying to put facets of yourself into those characters. I think Asher, at the beginning of The Giver, when he's goofy and a little bit of a rule-breaker, a little bit of a jokester, I align with him. But then he kind of transforms throughout the movie and becomes someone I don't necessarily relate to. I relate to Adam McCormick's sensitivity. He's more quiet and introverted, and I definitely have those moments as well.
Imaginary testing is unreliable, and in many cases, it's a huge waste of time and energy. In truth you just don't know what will happen until you try. You may start a business, and it could take off in ways no one could predict. Or it could be a complete failure. You could ask for a date and end up with the partner of your dreams. Or you could be rejected cold. It's great to visualize what you want, but you never really know what's going to happen until you act.
The way I try to explain it the best is that if Critic A from publication A hates our show, and Critic B from publication B loves our show, what are we supposed to do with that? We have to just respect everyone's opinions and go on making the show we want to make. I've never worked on a show that was altered by critical reception. You just can't afford to do that. So in that regard, it's actually no different that working in theater. It's just a lot more voices.
We've had a century in which we've allowed some industries to basically pollute the air, pollute the water, pollute the ground, pollute the rivers, and we've been trying sporadically to clean air acts and ways of regulating them. But we now are sitting in a world that's filled with all sorts of materials that we don't really know the impact of. It's not like they're necessarily all poisonous but it's odd to put all these materials into our environment and watch.
I'm mystified by the stuff that doesn't work. I'm mystified by what's going on in the critical side, too. Stuff I like is getting trashed and stuff that is being praised I think is terrible. I don't really feel in sync with what's happening, but at the same time, what I think keeps me afloat is that I try not to be, and don't want to be, very indulgent. I try to make the films as lean as possible, and to not spend a lot of time crawling up my own ass creatively.
I always try to stick to the script because I want to respect the writers, and I want to respect the director. But if the director and my fellow actors are okay with me playing with it a little bit, then I definitely want to play with it. I definitely want to do that, because I tend to... when I put things in my own words, it comes out way better. It flows naturally, it just feels better. I can put some weight into the words. Even in comedy, it just comes better.
Imagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik's cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have a chance of arriving by random shuffling, of just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.
A lot of it was, you know, you look for moments where, for instance, we were dependent on Abraham Lincoln making sure that the slaves were freed or John Kennedy bringing civil rights, or the first one I wrote about, George Washington trying to stop the British from invading and ending this country before it even began. Those were turning points where, if you had not had a president stepping up to the plate, if there wasn't a story like that, we would not be here.
I think what's happening is companies are trying to maximize shareholder value and I think they realized that if they could hire more effectively, they would. What I'm suggesting, though, is that human resources departments in most companies have become so detached - have become such a bureaucracy - that they have become clueless. They don't realize that the processes they have put in place have very little to do with recruiting, retaining and bringing on talent.
I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board of other partners tells you it's time to get your gold watch, and no physical claim is made on you like an athlete or an actress. So I try to plug along on the theory that I can still do it. I still keep trying to produce prose, and some poetry, in the hope that I can find something to say about being alive, this country, but generally the human condition.
Working with different people anyway is like life and meeting different people... as long as you can be empathetic, you can take a bit of them on and see what you can do to help their process. That said, my relationship with Woody Allen was trying to hang on his every word so that I could tell everybody what he said afterwards. But certainly, he was a very good example of somebody who you didn't hear talk above a very low volume for the entire time he was on-set.
Notes are tricky in an audition, because I find, more often than not, my instinct is right. If they have a preconceived notion about the role and it goes against my instinct, unless it makes sense to me, it often throws off what I'm trying to do. Though sometimes they have an insight that I don't because they've been living with the script. I don't have one feeling or another about notes, but it is always a little bit of a red alert when I get one in an audition.
There was a whole set of issues that the other Republican candidates couldn`t go after Trump that hard on. They had this difficult position where they were trying to knock Trump down while appealing to the voters who liked a lot of the outrageous things about Donald Trump.[Hillary] Clinton is giong to have no such restrictions. She`s going to attack him on a wide variety of fronts and I don`t think Trump is going to deal very well with being attacked in that way.
I was interested first of all in trying to capture this myth that was always changing and to create some sort of a master story, some version of the myth that resonated with me, since I could have taken more or less any detail that I wanted or the opposite and try to put that down on the page in a way that I could express from that outset for myself and for our readers what it was that was so magical about [Buckminster] Fuller's way of putting together the world.
The photographer discovers himself/herself being photographed and we can guess he is uncomfortable. Unsuccessfully he/she tries to recompose his posture and to look like a photographer taking photos. But no, he is and continues to be a spectator. The momentous fact of being photographed leads him to becoming an actor. And, as always, actors must assume a role, which is only an elegant way of avoiding to say they must choose sides, choose a faction, take an option.
That's always been like a fascination to me - watching my family, three sisters and a brother and all growing up basically in the same situation and each one being so totally different and going on to completely different areas and directions. But for me to go into psychoanalysis really steadily, would be putting too much energy into trying to figure out why I am the way I am... Basically this is how I am and it's alright and I don't want to know why I'm this way.
If you go to the right conservative places you'll find there's a huge argument about this among conservatives, particularly the conservative elites and the conservative intellectuals. There's always an argument among our people over who's the smartest person in the room and they're always trying to outsmart each other with the fanciest smartest most obscure argument. The fact is these arguments are taking place within the conservative movement I think quite a lot.
My job as an actor is to try to do what the director wants me to do. I'm going to do everything I can to incorporate that note and make it work. If it doesn't work, I'll try this kind of thing, and "How do you feel about that?" If you are at odds with the director, neither one of you is going to get anywhere. You really do have to be able to make both of you happy. Even when I was younger, there were times when you have to find a way to make it work for both of you.
[President Donald Trump ] trusts the CIA. This is about 17 or so unnamed agencies in an unnamed report that based the report on something that is totally false.The RNC was not hacked. And so the report is basically trying to make the case that the RNC was hacked, the DNC was hacked, and the only e-mails that came out were DNC e-mails, so therefore, this is the conclusive report that the Russians or whoever was doing the hacking wanted to unfairly change the election.
I don't always have the time I wish I had to understand something I don't understand. So I'm trying to do a little bit less of the quick pieces and a little bit more of the "here's how the Singaporean health care system works" kind of stuff, because to be good at my job, I have to keep learning. The thing that I fear the most is becoming one of those journalists who is still trying to apply the thinking of the decade in which they started three or four decades later.
