We're going to talk about the big things that matter, which are the little things, really. For me, Stars has always had one overarching theme, which is, we're all bastards, but God loves us anyway, whatever God means to you.
Acknowledging that we lose is the overarching theme in everything in Stars. To me, that's what punk means. Stars is a punk band because we acknowledge loss. We're not trying to win. We're not trying to project victory. You win alone. I'm not interested in singing for the one winner in the room; I'm interested in singing for all of the losers in the room.
I mean, I think we are a better team than last year offensively, but there is always a question with the Minnesota Twins. We'll just have to wait and see.
There are quite a few very funny people in my life. You know those people who don't mean to be funny, they just come out with these zingers that just make you howl with laughter. Usually you find these people in the road crew. A good crew is a key to a healthy funny bone.
People can be quite bullish with their opinions. That does not mean they have their finger on the pulse. It just means they value their own opinion.
The word 'confession,' to me, means needing to be absolved. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not asking people to understand. I'd like to think that I tell stories and sometimes my life weaves through it.
I think that the nightmares are telling me things about myself that I need to know. And I try to understand what they mean, so I can get to know something more about my soul.
Romance is important to me, and to have a romance with your husband takes a bit of doing. The key is to make sure your partner misses you. That means you have to take yourself away.
You have to be clear what your message is and what you're doing. I mean, Miley Cyrus is an amazing talent, and sometimes you kind of just want to say, 'We know you're not Hannah Montana anymore. We know that, my dear. My darling. Now, go be great.'
We own ourselves. This is the core of a libertarian theory of rights. But on this theory, while we are at liberty to kill ourselves (regardless of the consequences of others), we are not allowed to kill others, not even if this means that there we be fewer murders in the future, totally speaking.
I wanted to know what it means to know something, whether we can know at all, and, if so, how.
The Chinese are generally speaking much more reluctant than Westerners to killing as a means to the rescue of lives.
We don't miss what we never had, but we miss terribly things we almost had. And we miss things we used to have most of all. Through we hope and pray for our relationships, our looks, and our lives to improve, having more also means having more to lose.
Technology has come such a long way and you could pretty much do everything what's called 'in the box'. It means that it never has to leave your computer.
You don't necessarily have to go to film school to be a brilliant film maker. If you are a good listener and you study life, and you find that story that is buried within each and every one of us, and you figure out a way to bring that out. And sometimes it doesn't necessarily mean money or winning the lottery.
Self-development is the only thing that keeps a person from burning out. We all have many needs - the need for certainty, the need for variety, the need for significance, and the need for connection. But, ultimately, we must grow, and we must contribute in a meaningful way in order to feel fulfilled.
Raise your standards for the one thing over which you have complete control--yourse lf. It means you're committed to being intelligent, flexible, and creative enough to consistently find a way to look at your life in a fashion that makes any experience enriching.
I mean that's something we're very conscious of when writing. Tempos are very important. Like "Oh we can't play the song too fast because people aren't going to feel it." There's a pulse to a song. You can't play it too slow. We're always trying to find the perfect tempo.
Being on a film set is like being in tech forever. In theater, when you finally finish rehearsing, you go onstage and you do the lights and the sets and you make the machine of the production work. It takes usually about ten days in the theater, two or three weeks if it's a really big musical. I mean, it's hell on earth. You just sit around forever while they adjust the lights. And every playwright with half a brain runs for the hills when tech starts because it's so boring, and you don't want to talk to the director because the director is running this giant machine.
The kind of theater that I do is sort of ‘narrative realism,’ which I think in the broadest sense is legitimate to say is mainstream. I mean, in a certain sense, Suzan-Lori's plays have had mainstream levels of success. But Suzan-Lori is in some ways not a narrative realist.
In a sense, I feel like the job of the artist at all times is essentially the same, which is simply to tell the truth. I mean, I'm nervous about any prescriptions for what a writer should or shouldn't do.
Yugoslavia served as a reminder that the lessons of World War Two were only partially learned. There's a great line someone wrote in the middle of the 1990s, at the time when Clinton was agonizing about whether or not to go into Bosnia: "Everyone says, 'Never again. Never again.' But all they really mean is never again will Germans kill Jews in the streets of Warsaw".
Problems are just mile markers. Each one we pass means we've gotten better.
My kind of childhood comic ideal was Tim Conway. And just because I always loved that he could do so much without saying anything and just his physical comedy. I'd love - I mean, that would be kind of a dream to have him come on and be able to act across from him.
I'm socially awkward. What draws me to playing socially awkward characters? I think they're interesting. I'm fascinated kind of by - I mean, I know I'm sure I've got my own social awkwardness but I'm kind of fascinated by that and I lived, probably, I attribute it - I lived in New York for a long time, road the subways, saw a lot of awkwardness, but they're just interesting. They're not cookie cutter. They're usually very colorful characters. They see things different ways and, I don't know, its just a kind of - just a kind of life that interesting to me.
