There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience.
At this camp I had the unique experience of showing all these seasoned Westerners that it was possible to make a fire by the friction of two sticks. This has long been a specialty of mine; I use a thong and a bow as the simplest way.
Because of the power of neuroplasticity, you can, in fact, reframe your world and rewire your brain so that you are more objective. You have the power to see things as they are so that you can respond thoughtfully, deliberately, and effectively to everything you experience.
The most experience I had in the criminology field is playing a thug as an actor. That was my first paid job. The police academy at the college was paying people to reenact the calls that potential cops would get. So I got to play thugs and people who were unruly.
We certainly want those at the top to do well, but if you base your entire presidency and your entire economic platform on helping them do even better, you're missing what makes the economy tick. Because not everyone has been as fortunate as Mitt Romney, you cannot base your whole approach on a life experience as rarified as his.
Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.
Exile is not a time frame. Exile is an experience. It's a sentiment.
As time passes, the actual complexity of our history - even of our own personal experience - gets buried under the weight of the ideal image.
A lot of times, people won't be 100 percent real with their story, and I wanted to give people the drawn-out experience of the perseverance and the struggle that it took to get here.
I saw Tina Turner do 'Proud Mary' on TV, and it was so electrifying and such a unique experience. I remember crying out of excitement, and I knew that I wanted to be a performer and make people feel excited and moved, and that's why I gravitated towards it.
Love is a strange emotion. It is ever evolving. Lust is transient. With time, one realizes that love and togetherness are two different things. Very few people are lucky enough to experience the two emotions simultaneously.
In my experience, as a young black artist, you have to fulfill an archetype, or be a token - and I was unwilling to do that.
Tolkien was, I believe, writing about his experience in the First and Second World Wars, where he would have spent a lot of time without any female contact. He was part of the fellowship of men who went to war, and I think, really, that's what he's writing about.
I've been acting since I was six. I actually played a boy when I was six in 'Tommy.' I played Tommy and they put a wig on me. They put up my hair and put this little boy wig on me and that was my first acting experience. Then I did some other professional theater. I did Shakespeare when I was older.
I was playing the piano when I was three, writing songs when I was ten. I had a lot of experience before I got to college. I knew I wanted to be a singer, so anyone who met me, I didn't let too much time pass before I showed my talent.
I've been fascinated with severe weather since I was four, when I saw a tornado at night in my mom and grandmother's southeast Minnesota hometown while everyone else was asleep - an experience I encoded in 'The Stormchasers.'
Being in the bands of a hurricane, it's not like a tornado that's going to pass very quickly. It's the most serious thing that you will ever experience next to, I'm sure, an earthquake.
I think to have done 'Titanic' would have been a tortuous experience altogether. I feel good about where my life is, now. I feel free and joyous and happy and more liberated than I have ever been.
There's been a lot of experience with torture in history. It doesn't work.
I have been tossing around the idea of writing some non-fiction. Maybe a collection of short stories about my experience being a mom and how not to be perfect.
