In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

I came to Hollywood and within a decade I was one of the biggest action stars of all time.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

When I’m making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

When you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up. Once you get to the point where Hollywood sees that you create results, then the demand for you becomes higher.

I didn’t really want to live, so anything that was an investment in time made me angry… but also I just felt sad. When the hopelessness is hurting you, it’s the fixtures and fittings that finish you off.

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it’s kind of a lifestyle and it’s easy to get caught up in it – you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone’s doing a certain thing… It’s tough.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.

I stopped watching TV because of ‚The Wire.‘ Like, ‚The Wire‘ ruined everything for me because I don’t even want to watch anything else now.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world… If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

You just don’t know when you get in the editing room what you will need as a link or a tool for a transition. If you’re in a room, and there’s a kettle boiling, get a shot of it. Don’t worry if people think you’re nuts.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff.

But time has set its maggot on their track.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we’ve been trying to generate material.

I wanna thank MTV and the VMAs for choosing me to be a part of the show because, on this show, if you not an icon or upcomin‘ icon, you’re not on the show, you know?

I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night, ‚There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me dreaming of being a movie star.‘ But I’m not going to worry about them. I’m dreaming the hardest.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

There are no record companies in Waikiki.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Time itself comes in drops.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

I’ve always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, ‚Hi,‘ that the people ought to get their money’s worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.

I have only one understanding of development and of making success, and that’s by going step by step.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

Our diplomacy and development budget is not just about reducing spending and finding efficiencies. We need a frank conversation about what we stand for as that ‚shining city on a hill.‘ And that conversation begins by acknowledging that we can’t do it on the cheap.

People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.

I don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

The march of the human mind is slow.

In ideal form of social control is an atomised collection of individuals focused on their own narrow concern, lacking the kinds of organisations in which they can gain information, develop and articulate their thoughts, and act constructively to achieve common ends.

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

The power and energy sectors are the biggest constituents of the infrastructure sector. If you ignore them, no development will happen.

All I do is make music.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

The quote-unquote ‚description‘ of a leading man was once your tall, handsome man with the build of whatever, almost a trophy to some degree. I think now it’s about making a leading man what you want a leading man to be. In this day, you can’t deny talent. You look at Jonah Hill, you look at Zach Galifianakis, you look at myself.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

I work with my brother Finneas, and he produces all of my music in his little bedroom in our house. We actually tried renting out a studio for a month when we were producing ‚Don’t Smile at Me,‘ but it was really hard there, and we ended up just doing it at home anyway.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

Nothing recedes like progress.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

I write music every day.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.