I’ve been thinking recently about all the qualities you need in order to be an actor. First and foremost, you’ve got to have a thick skin and give out an ‘I don’t give a monkey’s what you think’ kind of vibe, while at the same time really caring what everyone thinks. You’ve got to be tough and sensitive at the same time.
I do not use short selling. The fund has not shorted a stock since the 2002 to 2003 time frame. At that time I did short three stocks, on which I broke even on two and made money on one of them. The experience taught me that I was not going to be using short selling going forward for a slew of reasons.
I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword.
You can’t please everyone. When you’re too focused on living up to other people’s standards, you aren’t spending enough time raising your own. Some people may whisper, complain and judge. But for the most part, it’s all in your head. People care less about your actions than you think. Why? They have their own problems!
We get to live in a time that we get to use social media as a tool. It’s not just a face on a piece of paper, and that’s what makes you someone’s favorite model. We can have a very similar sense of humor as someone, and that’s why we’re their favorite model, or our personal style, off the runway, is why we’re their favorite.
The funny thing about war is that people feel you need to be morally outraged. I feel morally outraged about it, and I’ve been doing it for long enough to feel morally outraged, because I have been in massacre scenes in West Africa, and I’ve been doing this for a long time now.
All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for… reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.
I’m happy to be on a winning team. My individual success, that lasts for a short period of time. The success of being a part of the South, of Atlanta, which is now the hot bed of music, that’s what’s gonna last the longest. The fact that I contributed to planting our flag and moving music to my city, that’s what I’m most proud of.
I woke up one time coming out of a blackout, and I was on an airplane, descending to land in Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. And all I can think is I must have decided it was a good idea to go to France, and got my passport, and got on a plane.
If you feel well and happy, your face will reflect this, but if you are down in the dumps and having a miserable time, your face will soon show this, too. In fact, you get the face you deserve by the time you’re forty, and one of the keys to looking and feeling younger is being active.
When we developed written language, we significantly increased our functional memory and our ability to share insights and knowledge across time and space. The same thing happened with the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and the radio.
Art is exalted above religion and race. Not a single solitary soul these days believes in the religions of the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Greeks… Only their art, whenever it was beautiful, stands proud and exalted, rising above all time.
There’d never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition. At a stroke, the American government closed down the fifth largest industry in the United States – alcohol production – and just handed it to criminals – a pretty remarkable thing to do.
It’s so important to keep a marriage alive with small treats and doing little things for each other. Just remembering to say nice things and to have listening time is vital. That ghastly phrase ‘quality time’ means taking three minutes to sit down and be still with someone rather than yelling over your shoulder as you rush out.
That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.
We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it’s a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.
Critical thinking is not something you do once with an issue and then drop it. It requires that we update our knowledge as new information comes in. Time spent evaluating claims is not just time well spent. It should be considered part of an implicit bargain we’ve all made.
I love that feeling you get once you leave a cinema having just watched a movie during the day. Your eyes slowly adjust to the natural light, and your mind, being a little slower, takes its time to separate the images of film from the reality you are suddenly facing.
For most people, an hour a day playing our favorite games will power up our ability to engage whole-heartedly with difficult challenges, strengthen our relationships with the people we care about most – while still letting us notice when it’s time to stop playing in virtual worlds and bring our gamer strengths back to real life.
German has always felt the language that I come back to. It’s given a very hard time by most people for being ugly and guttural. In fact, it’s one of the most melodic, lyrical languages around. And German literature is amazing. It’s just a treasury for me.
We live in a digital world where all is available at the touch of a screen. Money has been simplified, changed subtly over time from tangible bills to numbers in cyberspace. Cash is no longer in a cloth bag; it’s numbers on a screen. Numbers that can be manipulated and modified. If you run out of numbers, you can just buy some more, right?
I’m thankful to God for having a family that’s been there for me. He’s been there from the time I was a child to even now with my family helping with my little boy. It’s worth more than words could ever describe. That’s one of the ways I’ve been able to stay grounded is thanks to family and God.
