When I was with Ellen, I was telling people, If you come out, it's gonna be better for you. But I honestly don't know that.
At Ellis Island, I mean, you didn't go there if you arrived in first class. It was only the poorest, the people in the worst shape.
Beginning with a trip out to Ellis Island, I saw for myself where thousands of European immigrants took their first steps onto American soil, bringing with them nothing but their ambition: people such as Erich von Stroheim and Adolph Zukor.
Elon Musk should be at the top of the list of people to emulate when it comes to leading large organizations that are highly maneuverable and use it as a competitive advantage.
Elon Musk is a very, very smart man, but there are a lot of smart people in this world, and you've got to execute. He's got execution problems.
I think if Elon Musk asked me to go to Mars as a musician, to sing for people, I think I might just do that. A return ticket would be a nice incentive, though.
For decades, technology entrepreneurship has been revered, and people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk were heroes.
I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.
Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don't know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.
The problem with people who live in a world of speeches and books and theories is they don't know how to fix things in the real world when they go wrong. They feign ignorance, blame others, and make another eloquent speech.
I would say to people of a libertarian conservative position on an issue, do not do a taped interview. You're going to come out looking really bad. No matter what you say, no matter how eloquently you answer a question, your answer is not going to be what you said.
I'm not a guy who curses very much in my personal life. When I curse it sounds like a kid trying to be cool. But I think there are quite a few people, my father being one of them, who use curse words rather eloquently.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
In fact, most people are being squeezed in their little cubicle, and their creativity is forced out elsewhere, because the company can't use it. The company is organized to get rid of variants.
I've met Nicole Kidman, Elton John, loads of people.
My first albums as a little kid were Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,' Simon and Garfunkel's 'Greatest Hits' - and 'Workingman's Dead.' How many other people still listen to the music they liked at age 12?
I find that I'm really attracted to mysterious creatives, and I love people that are able to put their emotions out there for not just the world to see, but just that are giving of their emotions, but a little bit mysterious and elusive as well.
Figuring out why people who choose not to do something don't in fact do it is like attempting to interview the elves who live inside your refrigerator but come out only when the light is off.
That little Miley Cyrus... she's like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she's Hannah Montana, but what people don't realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she's 40 years old!
Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn't their parents'. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.
