San Francisco is a lot like Amsterdam - free, open-minded and casual - though I expected better weather.
I got a horror film, 'The Burning,' and suddenly I was making crazy money, like a thousand a week, so I moved into an apartment on Amsterdam with a guy who was also in 'The Burning,' Jason Alexander.
I said that I like to write on trains and that I wished Amtrak had residencies for writers.
Rap bores me, and all the glamour rock groups like Bon Jovi just amuse me. They obviously have a place, but they all sound like they use the same guitar player to me.
I don't just do a movie to do a movie. Of course I want to amuse people, but some of Madea's greatest moments are when she gets to talk about child rearing and bullying and all kinds of things like that.
I think I'm just like a lot of people who had nothing. We had to amuse ourselves, so we had to become amusing.
Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.
I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.
I've been an Amy Winehouse fan since her first album, 'Frank.' I always listen to her music when there's a lot going on and I want to be a bit grounded. It's like my musical warm fuzzy blanket.
I wanted it to be like Amy Grant, but it didn't pan out that way. My label actually went bankrupt, and I was left without a home.
Other than the 'Sesame Street' soundtrack, which I was obsessed with, the first artist I really felt I'd discovered on my own was Amy Winehouse. She was the first female artist I wanted to write like and sing like and be like.
It's a diabolical business. I can't imagine how hellish it must be to be hounded like Amy Winehouse and people like that. I have a little peripheral place on the outskirts of celebrity, when I go to premieres and that sort of stuff, which is as close as I want to get.
People who take risks like Amy Winehouse and Norah Jones take a second to catch on, but eventually they do because they're different and honest in a musical landscape that's not always like that.
I like to watch movies - I just saw the documentary about Amy Winehouse, which was very good and emotional.
I tend to use different microphones, different mic techniques, and different recording mediums - like analogue tape - that evoke multiple eras of recorded music at the same time.
I love Sylvan Esso. I want to bring in more electronic elements, but also some analogue stuff. Stuff like ‘70s drum machines really fascinates me.
I like 'Bright.' Some people didn't like 'Bright' - I loved it. I love that film for how blatantly obvious the analogies are.
Analogies, in particular, can illuminate, but they can also obscure and confuse. They need to be handled carefully, like rhetorical high explosives.
If the only tool we use to analyse what's valuable is a price tag, then those things that don't have price tags begin to look like they have no value.
Acting is invigorating. But I don't analyse it too much. It's like a dog smelling where it's going to do its toilet in the morning.
