Trying Quotes - Page 370

Since a photograph is frozen and mute, since there is no before and after, I don't want there to be a conscious awareness of any kind of literal narrative. And that's why I really try not to pump up motivation or plot or anything like that.

I really don't make a concerted effort to try to find a type of role.

I have to stop watching the Olympics. It just reminds me that I forgot to try really hard at something.

...those who think that faith is superior to reason, and try to reason me into thinking that way; why don't they faith me into it?

I don't ignore continuity, and try my best to stick as closely to the current status quo as possible, but it's not my primary concern when I start a story.

When you're walking onto a bus and trying to get there before the person in front of you, that's a different level of competition than playing in front of 80,000 people.

What makes me smile is a movie where I feel like it is dangerous, or there's that fresh idea there. It's about learning and growing and trying new things and tinkering, all of those things that keep you excited. But if you're not nervous, if you're not on that boundary of the unknown, I don't think you're getting better. I think you're kind of sitting back, and I don't think you're advancing the form.

What I’m trying to show is that the main event today is not seen by those of us that are living it… So it’s not the effect of [technology], it is that everything exists with-in [its milieu]. It's not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, so we are no longer conscious of its presence.

If you love your work, I'm not sure you have hobbies. I try to say no to things that other people could do and only say yes to things that only I could do.

I am trying to teach my children to feel a responsibility for their fellow human beings and a sense of connection with ... the world around them.

I have to decide whether I'm just laying down a groove, kind of a bed and canvas for the lyrics and music to live on, or trying to illustrate something in the lyrics.

If you have your wife, and you are proud of something she's done, wouldn't you go and support her in something? That is what I was trying to do.

I do try to pick music that is from different worlds and typically doesn't flow together. When you do that, you get songs with conflicting messages, but for me, it's on a musical level first and foremost.

I want people to see me for who I am and not for how someone else is trying to promote me.

You cannot live in Los Angeles for any period of time without eventually trying to write a screenplay. It's like a flu bug that you catch ... Even the plumber has a screenplay in his truck.

The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we try to remedy the failures of all the families, all the nurseries, all the schools, all the workshops, all the secondary institutions that once had some authority of their own. Everything is ultimately brought into the Law Courts. We are trying to stop the leak at the other end.

Did you ever have something to say and feel as if the whole side of the wall wouldn't be big enough to say it on, and then sit down on the floor and try to get it onto a sheet of charcoal paper?

After the bombing, most Iraqis saw what the perpetuators of this attack were trying to do.

I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet.

I was the Commander in Chief with men and women in combat. And the idea of trying to agonize in public or show weakness would have demoralized them.

Don't try to outguess what's going on in publishing, and write what you want to write.

With non-fiction writing I feel like I'm confined and driven by what actually happened. That makes the "plot". So it's a process of getting all of my notes typed up, then scanning through the notes, trying to extract or find certain vignettes that seem like they might write well - that might have a potential for good energy, shape, etc. And then at some point I start stringing these together, keeping an eye on the word count.

The writer, in order to proceed, is theoretically trying to predict where his complex skein of language and image has left his reader, who he has likely never met and who is actually thousands of readers.

In the space of two days I had evolved two plans, wholly distinct, both of which were equally feasible. The point I am trying to bring out is that one does not plan and then try to make circumstances fit those plans. One tries to make plans fit the circumstances.

Perhaps I cannot make my people good, she told herself, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad.