Most days it feels as if the world is whirling around me and I am standing still. In slow motion, I watch the colors blur; people and faces all become a massive wash.
All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.
Nashville is only a couple of hours from New York, and people just move at a slower pace there - and they don't care who you are or what you do.
I find painting a much slower process than comedy, where you can go a mile a minute verbally and hope to God that some of the people out there understand you.
I find painting a much slower process than comedy, where you can go a mile a minute verbally and hope to God that some of the people out there understand you. I don't paint every day. I'm not that motivated.
I'm very interested in silence. And, more importantly, in what happens when people aren't talking on stage. I'm interested in letting actors play and do things between the lines. And in slowing everything down.
Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making.
There was a point in the '80s when I looked out at my audience and I saw people that - were I not on the stage - they'd sooner slug me as they walked by me on the sidewalk. And I realized that I was way beyond the choir.
What helped me most were my failures and slumps - when I couldn't get work, people weren't interested in me or had written me off.
The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums.
What I really took in in India was that people - even in the slums - were happy with what they'd got. That's something we're not good at in the Western world.
Because cheating is easier when we can justify our behavior, people often cheat in small amounts: We can come up with an excuse for stealing Post-It notes, but it is much more difficult to come up with an excuse for taking $10,000 from petty cash.
Organized labor, if they're doing a responsible job, is going to organize the pooling of small amounts of money to protect the interests of the people who are not rich.
When you encounter people in life - like a chance encounter at a bar or wherever you happen to be - you make these incredibly quick, quite intricate decisions about people based on very small amounts of coded information. We're good at that.
Having a small business and being one of thousands of people whom no one in government will listen to, I have decided to run for supervisor as a person.
For years, people have been trying to talk to me about doing a show, and I wouldn't do one because I'm a serious business guy. I'm not going to do a stupid show. So, the opportunity came up with CNBC, and we started talking. It became a real business show. It's educational, people watch it, and it's great for small business.
Many small business owners want to pass their family legacy on to their kids and grandkids, but they are turned over to vulture funds because the family may be asset rich but lacks the cash to pay the estate taxes. I have met people who literally sold the farm to pay the taxes.
When I talk about the ability for fintech to promote kind of economic growth and productive citizens coming in, using different data and being able to lend to small businesses, see those small businesses start to grow - of course, that means more money for their families, you know, the small-business owner families. They start to hire people.
The American people want us to stop spending. And so let's just give them some certainty. Let's extend the tax - the existing tax cuts. And then let's give some more tax breaks to small businesses and large. And then maybe the American people will have some confidence.
We are a small country. That means there will be lots of similarities in policies. The priorities are about the same issues - you have to create more jobs; you have to invest in people so they are qualified for the jobs the new economy will bring.
