Alan Alda Quotes
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What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?
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The idea that the brain is not fully formed until you are almost 30 years old has already been introduced, and the Supreme Court already has based two rulings on it.
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I don't miss directing at all, and I don't miss screenwriting either because somebody's always telling you to do something different.
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There's plenty of money to be had. But you also lose your soul.
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Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman.
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Whenever I think of how much pleasure I have interviewing scientists, I remember that they're having the real fun in actually being able to do the science.
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There is a wonderful feeling of power when you're a director, but I don't think I need that, and I'm OK without it.
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The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
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'Never Have Your Dog Stuffed' is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.
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When does she do all this thinking? We're together all the time but she thinks deeply about things and with feeling and she can remember the facts. We've been married 48 years.
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I used to read science fiction a lot, and I still like science fiction when it is a model of how we really are and to see ourselves from another perspective.
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All I've ever tried to do is play real people.
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I made my first stage appearance when I was 6 months old.
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No matter how big the audience is going to be. I'm interested in doing things that are fun.
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The one hour live debate in the West Wing that we did was one of the most exciting times for me on stage or on camera, because anything could go wrong.
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I always loved Sid Caesar and all the people on his program.
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I was brought up as a Catholic, and I'm no longer a Catholic. I don't talk about my beliefs too much in public probably because I feel very strongly that it's something personal - more than personal, it's private.
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What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.
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Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
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Insanity is just a state of mind.
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The hardest thing for me about making movies, and that included 'M*A*S*H' because it was made like a movie, was starting and stopping.
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I used to be an amateur inventor when I was a kid; I'm always inventing something.
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If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.
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Working on The West Wing was similar in many ways to my experience on M*A*S*H, because you had people willing to work late at night to get it just right.