For me, the whole idea of performance is not being self-aware, and then sort of just experiencing.
One of the things that’s interesting is that the PC has always had a huge amount of scalability. It was sort of the wild dog that moved into Australia and killed all the local life because it could just adapt. There used to be these dedicated devices, like dedicated word processors.
I’m actually quite a nice person. It’s to do with the way I look, an uncompromising sort of face, brusque delivery and voice, and I think the combination of all that. When I’m doing pantomime, children will scream the place down before I open my mouth. There’s obviously something that really gets them.
I would say ‘The Chill’ by Ross Macdonald is sort of a prototypical example of how the private detective genre elevates itself to the level of literature.
I’m not great with money. I’d go crazy if I were left to my own devices. My mum and girlfriend sort it out. I’m not driven by it, but I love to be generous.
Honestly, every person, every individual has a process, and my philosophy, whether it’s an actor or an animator, is you try to understand the process that person has so you can get the most out of them, but I think you have to sort of manipulate that process with honesty.
Japanese is sort of a hobby of mine, and I can get around Japan with ease.
I’ve always seen myself as sort of this funky, eclectic artist.
Once I came out of the closet, it was sort of that thing of ‘The truth will set you free.’
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
When I got to 40 or so… I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever.
That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.
Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.
A writer has a difficult fate, but a Jewish writer has an especially difficult fate. His soul is torn; he lives on two streets with three languages. It is a misfortune to live on this sort of ‘border,’ and that is what I have experienced.
The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.
Each language has its own take on the world. That’s why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world.
My father sort of relented. He saw Rajiv, and he said he is a good man. But his more worried about his daughter, because I was going far to a place completely different… with completely different customs. He felt that perhaps I would not be able to accustom to these new ways.
From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.
We’re all trying to figure out what’s next, what’s best for our families, what’s best for ourselves, and there’s a certain sort of comfort in knowing that you’re not in it by yourself.
I get into certain yoga positions at times, when I’m working out and for exercises. I use a little of it in some of my meditation, but I chant now and that sort of replaced it.
I’m not to be confused with Natasha Henstridge in ‘Species,’ where I just emerge out of the weird alien womb looking amazing. I really rely heavily on my black outfits and my gold chains to give me sort of a thing.
I’ve been in a band, so I understand the politics. Sometimes the bass player doesn’t like what the guitar player is doing, and you have to sort of even that out.
I always feel the movement is a sort of mosaic.
There’s always a spattering of people who see Hanson who were influenced by classic ’60’s and ’70’s rock and roll. In a lot of ways, we’re sort of the anatomy of a ’70’s rock band if you examine what we do: white guys who grew up listening to soul music from the ’50’s and ’60’s.
I never once dreamed of sort of being able to be in an American TV series, you know? It was all about theater and touring and sort of being an actor around Scottish theater.
I have a helicopter that I use for U.K. business trips, and I fly myself. I have a yacht in Antibes in the south of France, which is a sort of indulgence, as we only use it for about four weeks a year. The rest of the time, it is chartered out to people as a business.
I think we sort of are all fans of love really, if you’re not then you’re too cynical aren’t you?
At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn’t mean that you can’t think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places.
For us, when we think about the Middle Ages, it’s sort of this rarefied, distant time that we have no connection to, especially if you grew up in America.
Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?
Of course, women are free to start any kind of company they want. But women sometimes identify different problems than men do and start different sorts of companies as a result.
Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal – a sort of ‘voting’ situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is.
Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, ‘convulsions of nature,’ etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God’s love.
In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified.
Figure skating is an unlikely Olympic event but its good television. It’s sort of a combination of gymnastics and ballet. A little sexy too which doesn’t hurt.
I’ve always envied people who compose music or paint, because they don’t have to be bothered with the sort of crude mess that language normally is, in everyday life and in the way we use it.
I think the accessories look very modern and very exciting. These big earrings, these big hoops. I think the girls are sort of falling in love with… collars, neck collars.
I am an Irish Catholic person. I’ve been a man and a woman. I speak Russian, sort of. And then I’m very diplomatic.
Sports of every sort had always appealed to me.
I had sort of given up on conventional journalism. I found it far too restrictive.
For a lot of folks who get sober, the process of getting and staying sober becomes their higher power, and it becomes a religion that sort of consumes a whole lot of them. I just don’t think that that’s necessary. I think that that can be a side note rather than the story of your life.
If you get into multicultural sort of casting for no other reason than to diversify, then it seems false.
I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.
Many of the mainstream agricultural scientists, especially at the agricultural schools, but at all of our major universities, are tied into all sorts of contractual relationships and consulting relationships with the life science companies.
I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy – the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
My stepfather is a baron. He has a castle in Belgium that’s been in his family for hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s not fancy; it’s really sort of brimstone and dark. It’s got a moat and a drawbridge.
If you are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity, we won’t know how resilient you are. It’s only when you’re faced with obstacles, stress, and other environmental threats that resilience, or the lack of it, emerges: Do you succumb or do you surmount?
It’s such a stressful environment, I find, being an actor, being put in the chair and ‘Touch this, that, and the other,’ it’s too much for me. I find it hard to tolerate that sort of stuff. If you’re not enjoying it, don’t do it. You’re wasting everyone’s time.
Every day is sort of a jigsaw puzzle. You have to make sure that you’re putting the most important things first.
My real personality comes out in the country. More spontaneous, more excited. There’s always someone watching you in the city – you’re a sort of zoo animal. My true nature is to want to hide a bit.
