That's what my music is good for - clearing out the house and being alone.
Most people don't like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.
Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn't come alive until the leader models it.
I started running, and I hated it. Of course, everyone hates running for the first mile. If you're running two miles or twenty miles, it always hurts. Now I live it. I look forward to it. It's really good. It clears my head.
Although everyone fights, few people know how to have a good argument, an argument that clears the air and makes it less likely a future argument will take place on the same subject.
What Bill Clinton did to us was cruel. The White House gave my attorneys indications that there was a good chance for my clemency to be granted. I had to prepare myself for being released because there was no sign that my petition would be denied.
I checked to see if there'd been a really good book published in the last few decades. Then I started with what Cleopatra would have read, asking myself, 'What can we know about her education?' It turns out to be a very great deal, and bizarrely, no one had written about that before.
I went out to the desert where Cleopatra camped out with her mercenary army. It's a desolate outpost. Nothing has changed since her day. You realize how far she had to travel. Not only is it a good 150 miles against the current, you can't take a ship.
Emotions are contagious. We've all known it experientially. You know after you have a really fun coffee with a friend, you feel good. When you have a rude clerk in a store, you walk away feeling bad.
If you have one good series, you know, it's a blessing. Two good series is unusual. Three is a phenomenon, but right now, I'm working with these wonderful women on 'Hot in Cleveland,' and Valerie Bertinelli, and Wendy Malick and Jane Leeves are like, it's like the buddy-ship we had on 'Golden Girls' and 'Mary Tyler Moore.'
My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.
Film schools didn't exist when I was growing up. I learned by working with clever people. Good writers and cinematographers.
Watch 'Dog with a Blog' to get a good laugh, to see me, of course, and to see an awesome, awesome talking dog who is the cleverest, most awesome dude in the world. He's really, really adorable and cute, and it's really cool seeing what kind of tricks he has up his sleeve.
Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.
Basically, if you could get a good trailer out of the script, Roger had no objection to you making a really good movie. He liked it if you did. He liked the more cleverness and ingenuity you could bring to it. He just wasn't going to give you any more money.
It sounds cliched, but superheroes can be lonely, vain, arrogant and proud. Often they overcome these human frailties for the greater good.
I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.
I'd love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked.
People still knew me as Charles, so when I came across Charlemagne in a history book, that sounded good: Charles the Great, a warrior who used his power to spread religion and education. He was the head of the Carolingian dynasty, and with me being from South Carolina, that clicked.
We've been called the soundtrack of people's lives. There have been lots of downs, of course but mostly ups. That EW&F is still clicking at least twenty years on and has a life of its own, that the songs have stayed alive - we're like a good book that people go back to.
