Most people in business and within their personal lives move towards complexity. More To Dos. More projects. More products. More meetings. More possessions. More goals. The best – I suggest to you – move in the opposite direction.
What I do is the opposite of building walls. I build bridges. A bridge is something that connects instead of separating.
Some writers such as John Cheever and Raymond Carver seem to draw artistic energy from analyzing the realm of their own experiences – their social circles and memories and mores. I’m one of those who draw creative energy from the opposite.
Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite – getting something down.
I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected.
But when you work with the director and the real person who is playing opposite you, it changes everything. You are almost in a working session. I was very comfortable, and that’s maybe what helped me to get the part.
Action and reaction are equal and opposite.
Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
Now, playing a love interest can be really thrilling, if you’re working opposite thrilling people.
I combined theatre and films with live TV, such as ‘The Royal Variety Show,’ performing sketches opposite Bob Hope and Maurice Chevalier.
I’ve worked opposite so many male actors whose egos have been so delicate that it was just so hard to do the work.
That routine thing is not comforting to me. It’s the opposite to that.
Wagner is contrapuntal in a philosophical way as well as a musical way. What I mean by that is that every tendency has its opposite, and you see that in the man himself. He’s a metaphysical hermaphrodite – he embraces hard and soft, masculine and feminine.
People think New York is this big city where no one knows each other, but when you live in the Village, it’s the opposite.
When you’re playing someone who has a strong ego about themselves, you can’t play them when you have the opposite opinion of the one they have of themselves.
I’m always looking for a chance to play somebody who’s completely opposite of me, just because I find it more interesting.
If I’m walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don’t know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who’s drowning?
The opposite of speculation is to be present to the world simply as it is.
Sometimes, I have played something that psychologically sticks with me, that’s opposite of where I am. I guess I have a lot of anger in me.
If someone gives you so-called good advice, do the opposite; you can be sure it will be the right thing nine out of 10 times.
When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That’s when the sparkle started for me.
All you would hear every night on the news was that somebody had been shot dead in a certain part of Belfast. We lived opposite a judge, and there were always soldiers crouched down in our garden. We’d sit and talk to them, and I even used to sing to them!
I don’t mind a little Sturm und Drang. When I was doing ‘Riding in Cars With Boys,’ I wouldn’t smile at anybody, because my character, Bev, was angry at the world. I’m the opposite. Inside my head I’d be like, God, I’ll explain to you at the end of shooting that I’m not this person.
Women are not stupid, but they were not clever enough to realise that feminism did not bring freedom, but the opposite. That’s why I’m glad feminism is dead.
I can be very difficult if people are not professional, or lazy – or the opposite, which is take themselves too seriously.
Spirituality does two things for you. One, you are forced to become more selfless, two, you trust to providence. The opposite of a spiritual man is a materialist. If I was a materialist I would be making lots of money doing endorsements, doing cricket commentary. I have no interest in that.
Art can do the opposite of glamourise the unattainable: it can show us anew the genuine merit of life as we’re forced to lead it. It is advertising for the things we really need.
In tennis, a lot of parents are accused of driving their kids into tennis. I would say I’m the opposite: I drove my parents into it. They didn’t take it that seriously until I was about 11 or 12 years old, when they realised I had an opportunity to go pro.
People equate sexy with promiscuous. They think that because I’m shaped this way, I must be scandalous – like running around and bringing men into my hotel room. But it’s just the opposite.
I do know that I’ve read somewhere that it’s been statistically proven that in times of war, horror films are much more popular. I don’t know why that is. You’d think it’d be the opposite. You’d think people would want to escape from it.
People sometimes turn out to be almost the opposite of how they present. It isn’t because they’re trying to fool you or because they’re hypocrites. It’s because they badly want to be that thing, and so they’ll try to be it.
The compulsion to do the opposite of what you are told does not lend itself to many occupations outside the entertainment industry. Within the industry, it is unlikely that you will be very successful without it.
You get your heart stomped by the opposite sex, and you’re hurting so badly that you write ‘Sometimes When We Touch.’ But then what happens when you’ve been married for 25 years? You can’t rely on those emotional male-female roller coasters. You have to start using your imagination and the powers of empathy more.
To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
I read The Bell Jar, and then I read her memoir and her diaries, and a third book, an outside opinion. Just the way she made the pillows so neat on the oven door. It just seems to be the opposite of, if you’re going to take your life, in a horrible rage it happens.
People think that, when you’re doing comedy, nothing means anything, that people run around and act crazy. It’s quite the opposite. The stakes are life-and-death.
Man, we were so opposite. One guy sang high, the other low. One guy tall, one short. We were like a quartet without the two guys in the middle. If you were putting two guys together to make hit records, you wouldn’t have picked Bobby and me.
Some people have a misunderstanding about the Army. Some people think, ‘Hey, you’re in the military, and everything is super-hierarchical, and you’re in an environment that is intolerable of criticism, and people don’t want frank assessments.’ I think the opposite is the case.
I think barefaced, minimal makeup happens mostly on editorial shoots. And I’ve taken a swing at minimal makeup here and there, but I think a lot of what drag celebrates is the opposite of that. I think the inauthenticity and the hyperfemininity is part of why it’s so celebrated.
When I first got a call for the movie, I couldn’t believe that I am doing a film opposite Akshay Kumar. He is such a big superstar.
People think our music’s very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it’s just the opposite, really… I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.
The same is the case with those opinions of man to which he has been accustomed from his youth; he likes them, defends them, and shuns the opposite views.
Some actors can create characters and leave them at ‘Cut!’, but I work the opposite way and drag them out of me. For me, it’s about fixing your fabric to fit the role.
The script will point you in certain directions and I go the opposite if I can. I try do do one thing and tell a different story with my eyes. I believe what’s more interesting is always what’s not being said.
Whenever a situation develops to its extreme, it is bound to turn around and become its opposite.
We’re programmed to believe that time is the enemy, that it takes away from us or that it diminishes us. I have found that it’s done the opposite to me. Life is in perfect balance. It’s just that our perception of it isn’t.
The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.
In the U.S., the term ‘general aviation’ means its exact opposite, the way ‘public school’ does in England. An English public school is private and, on top of that, exclusive. Likewise, general-aviation airports in the U.S. are for everyone but the general public.
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.
In athletics, older runners tend to go for longer races, but it’s the opposite in swimming because your body can’t handle the endurance.
Lots of English people say exactly the opposite of what they mean.
You cannot exercise and be amused about it. You cannot integrate the dying bug into your core workout and hold to the position that you are a spiritual being. In this way, the body and the mind are each other’s opposite unto death, which is why you have to choose which of them you are going to follow.
There’s a lot more responsibility at home, so a tour is like the opposite for me. It’s like a breath of fresh air.
