I can't watch other people doing comedy. As soon as somebody starts being funny I have to turn off because it upsets me. I get comedy indigestion. I just hate anybody else being funny. That's my job.
Most people enjoy 'potato-chip news' from time to time - to track a presidential election or the Oscars. However, some are particularly drawn to material that makes them feel shocked, frightened, insecure, or indignant, and that's what potato-chip news often provides.
I used to always prefer to text, and in fact got indignant when people called. This was totally irrational.
At first I was a bit indignant about it, and then I realised, 'No, that's what people want, so that's what is given.' But it's not in your control. It's just what happens to you, and that's what's frightening.
There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying, 'How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people's lives?' To which my response was, 'Well, I hope so.'
I know that there are people who believe that if they get to the stage where life is absolutely intolerable because of pain and indignity... they would like to end their life before nature intended, and we think they should have the choice to do so.
I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.
There's always going to be a little bit of autobiographical content to everything. It's how you lend some authority to what you write - you give it that weight by drawing on your direct experiences and indirect experiences from people that you know well, or a little.
People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe.
When a company creates a product that directly or indirectly adversely impacts the health of people, that product must be regulated. The process by which it's created must be regulated. No company has the right to injure people. No company.
No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.
The fact that the internet is so active; people can now speak to me indirectly.
There certainly are people who are a pain to work with. I'd be crazy to name them. You can't be indiscreet in this business.
One of the interesting things about the Ozarks is you just about don't have street crime. It's strictly between people who know each other. It really isn't indiscriminate; it's kind of between themselves.
The thing people have to remember is there's nothing natural about racism as it exists in America. I mean, we know this historically. We can look at 1619, when Africans first came here, and how early African slaves intermixed pretty indiscriminately with indentured white servants.
You don't torture people. You don't indiscriminately attack civilians. You protect as good as you can the impact of your warfare on women and children.
Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
The libertarian worship of individual freedom, and contempt for social convention, comes easiest to people who have never really had to grow up.
Throughout the world, our insistence on individual freedom and opportunity has been at the bottom of what people think when they hear the very word 'American.'
The little platoon of the black community is the church. Our Christian faith is based on individual freedom from sin and the personal decision to find spiritual liberty that leads to a better life here on Earth and for eternity. On Sundays in America, the most conservative people can be found in black churches.
