You know I've got a chum, a smashing mate, he's got a dog with no legs, and he calls it a cigarette. It's true, yeah, because at nighttime he has to take it out for a drag.
I'm comfortable in my own skin. I know I'm not going to ever be Cindy Crawford or Elle MacPherson.
I think the Norweigan model of municipalities owning cinemas and being programmed by people who know about films is a good one.
I don't know one lens from another. That's not my job. It's the cinematographer's job. But I can talk to people.
I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.
I know how a cinematographer wants to be treated by their director, and so I already have a leg up in that department, and I know what would be insulting to say to a DP because I've been one for so long.
I don't come from a film background. I haven't learned anything about films or film-making. But I have a thirst to know everything about my profession. I want to learn about cinematography, about editing, about music recordings, about post-production. So when people in the know talk, I willingly listen.
If anyone has followed my career, they know that there's been a lot of obstacles and a lot of ups and down through my career. But day in and day out, and in the square circle, I went out there and always did my best.
I've got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I'm very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I'm really starving.
By now, we all know that Hollywood producers always chase after the same properties, that the sharks circle simply because the other sharks are circling.
You know why they think I'm reclusive? I don't do the Hollywood stuff. I've never been on the circuit.
Most of my good friends have fights with me. Those guys know that I was in martial arts for 12 years fighting on the circuit.
I was being called to surrender the very citadel of my self. I was completely in the dark. I did not really know what repentance was or what I was required to repent of. It was indeed the turning point of my life.
I think that's given inspiration to other musicians. I know, particularly through the 90s, a lot of bands would cite Rush as an influence. I don't think it was so much our music, but more the way we really stuck to our guns.
Networking has been cited as the number one unwritten rule of success in business. Who you know really impacts what you know.
I don't think 'Citizen Kane' stands more than one watch. Power corrupts. Who didn't know that?
Experts always know everything but the fine points. When I took my citizenship exams, no one there knew how the White House came to be called the White House.
I believe in the promise of America. Being a Cuban refugee, having come here when I was eight, I know that this is a shining city on the hill.
In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri - where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.
I don't think I'll ever fully get over losing the city council seat. I don't know how that happened. But it was less than 1 percent out of 50,000 votes. I'd put in six or seven years into changing L.A.
