Thinking Quotes
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I usually write very few stage directions. I think a lot of that is a waste of time. The art of screenwriting is in its terseness, saying a lot with a little. I have no patience when I read a script where the writer describes this guy and what he's wearing and his glasses and his hair.
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This is the power of the powerful to define, to structure, to say, 'This is the way the world works.' It's enormous power. Among the powers of the weak, I think the first one is the power not to believe the powerful.
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I think the first song I ever wrote ... was called "Can't Help Thinking About Me." That's an illuminating little piece, isn't it?
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I do think that she [Hillary Clinton] will prove that she's the best, whether she's in the White House or somewhere else. I think it will very much be a historic moment, when we are able to say that we actually have done something like put a woman in the White House. Its very interesting to think about considering its taken us long as it has.
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Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.
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The power of thought, of idea, is incommensurable, is immeasurable. The world is dominated by thought.
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In college I wrote for the university newspaper, and I had several short stories published in small press. I think it's just been a natural progression of where to go with the imagination and not have to grow up.
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If you had a man when I was your friend and then we started hooking up and you broke up with your boyfriend, so now we're together and you have a new male friend? I'm going to look at you sideways because your character's horrible and now I'm thinking you're going to do to me what you did to your ex.
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Part of why I think I have so much fun working in the mockumentary genre is that you can cut to pretty much anything at any time. People are now so conditioned to watch documentaries - they know how they operate, and that you can introduce a new character by cutting to them, and now they're in it. Similarly, being able to treat a sidebar idea that has nothing to do with your main story really seriously, the way the rest of it is being treated - all the pomp and circumstances lend themselves, I feel, to making comedy feel really earned and funnier and weirder.
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To me, if we're not failing a little bit, we're not trying hard enough. I think great cultures encourage risk and are tolerant of failure. If you don't do that, you're going to end up with a culture that is stagnant and not thinking about the next generation of products and experiences.
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Too often we think about the green economy as an elite market niche, one in which affluent people spend more money to consume greener and cleaner products.
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I couldn't even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn't let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn't stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane.
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The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.
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When you first get money, you buy all these things so no one thinks you're mean, and you spread it around. You get a chauffeur and you find yourself thrown around the back of this car and you think, I was happier when I had my own little car! I could drive myself!
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The censors don't bother with fantasy books, especially old ones. They can't understand them. They think it's all kids' stuff. They'd die if they knew what The Chronicles of Narnia were really about.
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I don't think getting in and out of a limousine has anything to do with being an icon.
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Most of the time, I grill over high heat. I like things to move fast. I like the sound and smell of a very hot fire. I gravitate towards dishes that you can get on and off the grill as quickly as possible. After a while, you'll know without thinking about it how hot the fire is.
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I think people are people and if their feelings are real and truthful, they can connect.
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You might ask yourself why you want to surprise your readers in the first place. A surprise ending is sort of like a surprise party. Probably some people, somewhere, enjoy having friends and trusted colleagues lunge at them in the sudden blinding light of their own living room, but I don't think most of us do.
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When a kid can understand that a word can mean two things, there's some real thinking going on. They have a vested interest in finding out what a word means, because it's the punch line to a joke.
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I grew up thinking my father was tacky. There was no color coordination. It was whatever was cool. 'These sweatpants are cool. I'll wear them with these shoes that are cool.' He had less inhibitions. I wasn't respectful of his swag then.
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As a writer, you're always trying to say the best thing. You're always thinking about what's the best thing to say, and what's the hardest way to say it, and what's the best line? Sometimes the best line is the simplest line. Sometimes the best line is the line that evokes more feeling than actual wordsmithing.
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This is something that Randi Weingarten said to me when I interviewed her once, which I think I quote in chapter nine. She talks about how only 7 percent of private sector workers in the American economy are in unions. So all the protections that teachers have that are due to collective bargaining - including generous pensions, generous health plans, limits to what they can be asked to do after school and in the summers - all of those things are sources of resentment to the public. And I think that politicians have played off of that quite effectively.
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I knew that in order to make a more lasting impact, to be on a show that people would watch on a regular basis, I would have to change my thinking.
