The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.
When the 'Seinfeld' show said it was going to be a show about nothing, everybody said it couldn't - wouldn't work. It did. 'Thor' is about something, about that character finding his destiny, but it's not doing what was expected... and yet it's doing very well.
Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.
God has called us to be His representatives in our nation and in our world. Select candidates who represent your views and work for their election.
There is that much to be done that no select or small portion of people can do; only the greater mass of the Irish nation will ensure the achievement of a Socialist Republic, and this can only be done by hard work and sacrifice.
I'm more selective now I've got a family. I don't want to work all the time. My daughter's 12; I don't want to miss out on her life. Soon she'll be a teenager; she won't want me around.
In my research, I've interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call 'different': scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.
Hollywood wouldn't suit me. In L.A. it's all about work - studio people have their five minutes with you and they go, 'Oh mah Gahd, I love your movie.' You just feel very self-conscious there.
I feel empathy for people who are trapped in a prison of self-consciousness in an uncomfortable way. We can be free, but we're so held back. So perhaps that's why I feel a duty to make my work. I feel liberated when I'm doing it, and I want other people to feel liberated through it.
A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.
Emotional self-control is the result of hard work, not an inherent skill.
It is only through the opposition of ideas that we can learn to be self-critical, to work towards intellectual humility.
When I was 12 there was a big shift in mindset and I realised that if I want to get something out of it then I need to work hard and focus all my energy just for this sport and that's when I started training and taking things more seriously. I became a lot more self-critical and analysed the driving more and more, and that was when I was 12.
Legislation that would withhold funding for the United Nations is fundamentally flawed in concept and practice, sets us back, is self-defeating, and doesn't work.
Virat is in your face, he wants to dominate and has a work ethic like no one else. Whether it comes to discipline, training, sacrifice or self-denial, it is unbelievable.
Self-government won't work without self-discipline.
Just because you're struggling with self-discipline doesn't mean you have to raise the white flag and declare your self-improvement efforts a complete failure. Instead, work to increase the chances that you'll stick to your healthier habits - even when you don't feel like it.
I want to work on things that aren't self-evident, to propose things that are radically different and game-changing.
Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.
For a memoir to really succeed, the author has to do such hard work before they come to the page. They have to do a brutal self-examination of everything they believe to be true.
