One day I was in the movie world with its glamour and then when I looked at it realistically and realised my shelf life was over, I was out of it all, setting up office somewhere.
Once you’re in a room like ’30 Rock,’ it’s a creative setting, so you write more even after you go home, just because you’re still in that mode of coming up with jokes. So the job wasn’t sapping standup jokes, but it was sapping stand up time and energy, and I wouldn’t be able to travel as much.
You know, men would much rather run away than talk about stuff, and my default setting has always been, ‘If you have an argument, walk out the door.’
Multiple characters’ opinions on societal roles, as well as their perceptions of themselves and others, help me lose myself in whatever strange and wonderful setting I’m reading about.
The most remote place I’ve been to was in Greenland. I remember setting out for a solo hike from a small cabin, itself several hours’ boat ride from the nearest settlement.
Slipstream fiction is usually defined as fiction with a contemporary setting in which story elements are mimetic (that is, seem real) – except for one or two eerie strangenesses. Unlike outright fantasy, these are not explained or integrated into an alternate-reality setting.
Anger clearly has its proper place at work, which is neither wholly absent nor ever present. The manager who is an emotional blank is just as hard to work for as the volcanic boss, and both can do great harm by setting an unhelpful example for what kind of emotional expression is expected and accepted.
In my experience, it is the leader – the CEO – who plays the crucial role in creating and ‘owning’ an organization’s culture, setting the tone, and executing on that consistently.
You go from a touring car to an IndyCar, which isn’t a great jump, and then you go to this big old heavy stock car which doesn’t feel like anything you’ve ever driven before. All of a sudden none of the stuff you’ve learned in your career – like setting up the car or what the mechanics need to know – works any more.
When I was setting out as a kid, five, six, seven years old, England was a dream. One of my best days as a player was my England debut – but it didn’t quite happen after that!
Women are taking the main stage. They are center stage, and they’re setting all these records and making history, and I want I be a part of that. I’ve worked so hard to be a part of that.
In Baltimore, I was walking with a friend who was playing at a pub he kept referring to as the Horse. But when I saw the sign ‘The Horse You Came In On’ – I thought, ‘My God.’ I had no intention of ever setting a Jury novel in the U.S., but when I saw that, I thought, ‘That’s it.’ The names are very important.
Any setting can potentially acquire this vividness. It slowly arrives during the period of research, until it is as immediate to me as my own real surroundings.
We go old-school during the summer, like swimming or setting up lemonade stands. I try to teach my kids to make their own fun.
Courting is getting to know each other in a group setting, both families spending time together and the couple setting goals together to determine if they are meant to marry.
For me, I wouldn’t mind if I never did another Olympics; nothing can beat London. The setting, the support, the military people. From start to finish, it was such fun. I had the most amazing time.
For me, the main thing is that I continually improve my game and make sure I keep setting the bar high.
I worked with my acting coach one-on-one for hours and hours, every single day for two months, before even setting foot on set or putting on Jessica Jones’s clothes.
Securing dignity for everyone in old age means transforming support for families who look after their elderly and disabled loved ones, and fully joining up the NHS and social care – not setting local services in aspic.
I go for drives in the Flint Hills, which is the setting for ‘The Virgin of Small Plains’.
There is no gilding of setting sun or glamor of poetry to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmers’ wives.
Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It’s geometrically perfect. It’s tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard – or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers.
I wasn’t setting out to write a documentary; if I had, I would have done it in a completely different way. I was asked to write a drama that would appeal to a big audience in America that had no knowledge or interest in The Tudors at all.
Athol Fugard became famous as a playwright, so although ‘Tsotsi’ the book was written in the ’60s, it was only published in the ’80s. It was then optioned pretty much every year by producers. I think the problem was that holding onto its period setting made it very hard to get finance.
In fact, the only way to inspire people to embrace change is through setting a narrative and telling a story. It can be central to innovation and change, and at the same time it can preserve tradition and memories.
I pride myself on setting tough picks and going out there and being physical. And on the defensive end, players drive the lane, I’m either going to try to take a charge on you or foul you pretty hard.
In terms of intellectual property, so many of the job creators I know are start-ups. In the IP setting, we can meaningfully improve on the status quo, and in so doing, we can help small businesses, large businesses, and those in between.
It doesn’t matter if people perceive me as being a little strange. I think overall, even when I am on stage, when people see me, I am setting an example.
Prior to getting signed, I did a handful of like, small independent events around the area. I did a pre-show kind of match in exchange for helping set up the ring, setting up chairs and stuff like that.
Some people fascinate me. They really worship at the altar of their careers, you know? And it’s terrifying. It’s sort of like setting a table and waiting for someone to come along and whoosh – push all the plates onto the floor.
I can’t comment on any outside perception. I’m happy to come out and talk about movies that I’ve worked on in a setting like this. Otherwise, I have my own life that I live which is very different and private.
I try to write characters that are as real, emotionally and psychologically, as I can make them; I feel the same way about setting. This often means that I’m drawing from my experiences and observations.
I feel like my experience on ‘Community’ was that I saw just how important that first year is for a series. That is where you work all the pieces out, and that means honing the characters’ voices, setting that tone, finding your angle.
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has been one of my good friends in the House of Representatives. When she was brutally shot, Gabby was out doing what she loved to do – meeting with her constituents in a local setting, allowing people to speak to her directly about the issues that concerned them.
The real challenge to upholding India’s freedoms is how patchy and individual-driven it is when it comes to the judiciary. The system is so arranged that instead of legal precedent and case law setting the template for the court’s interventions, the idea of justice is guided by what Judge A or Judge B may think.
I often think of setting as an important character in my story. ‘Dark Powers’ takes place in Doncaster, a Maryland Eastern Shore community rich with watermen and historic atmosphere. I modeled it after a stunning little town called St. Michaels, but since a lot of bad things happen in Doncaster, I changed the name.
I enjoy setting the scene and coming up with interesting frames. ‘True Detective’ was a very hands-on set.
Writers often like to talk about how intuitive the writing process is, but in truth, building a book is a remarkably unintuitive task. Or, to put it more accurately, you need a lot more than intuition. You need plot and characters. You need a setting. You need a theme that is relevant and supported by your text.
With ‘Black and White 2,’ I want to put it in a setting where you’re actually using the creature. I want the little people within the land not to just be a resource but actually be in conflict and fighting and battling against each other.
Shyness is about the fear of social judgments – at a job interview or a party you might be excessively worried about what people think of you. Whereas an introvert might not feel any of those things at all, they simply have the preference to be in a quieter setting.
The parent knows instinctively that if they’re working and setting an example for their child that means that child is more likely to be in school, more likely to stay out of trouble and more likely to complete their education.
I started to think I could do just as much by playing basketball and setting a good sporting example than I could by going on the mission. But in the end I realized the mission was what was expected of me and was what would be better for me in the end.
There were aspects of stardom I didn’t like, which were of no consequence, really, but the positive things far outweighed the negative. By the time I came to write ‘Setting Sons,’ I felt my writing was more like prose, set to music.
Don’t keep rewriting and polishing something if it isn’t setting the world on fire: start something new instead and consider the earlier story a learning experience.
