Work

A writer wants something more than money for his work: he wants permanence.

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.

I enjoy doing my work, and I don't want to deal with the other things. When you enjoy doing your work so much, why deal with where to show, how to show, what to do? If the artist finds the right gallery which respects their work and gives them that freedom to do whatever they want to do, the artist can focus on his work.

I remember, in my first show in New York, they asked, 'Where is the Indian-ness in your work?'... Now, the same people, after having watched the body of my work, say, 'There is too much Indian philosophy in your work.' They're looking for a superficial skin-level Indian-ness, which I'm not about.

My work is not directly about the social or political.

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving, it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.

There are a lot of people who know me who can't understand for the life of them why I would got to work on something as unserious as baseball. If they only knew.

I'm pretty lucky to work on both 'CSI: NY' and 'Supernatural.' Not bad gigs!

I have some amazing fans! They're just so dedicated and so nice and so sweet. I'm, like, no one and I'm just starting out, and these people appreciate your work and it's nice to hear that.

My goal? To test out every diet and exercise regimen on planet earth and figure out which work best. I sweated, I cooked, I learned to pole dance. In the end, I lost weight, lowered my cholesterol and doubled my energy level. I feel better than I ever have.

It's nice to work with your own alma mater.

The best are the ones built without controversy, when the owner, the architect, and the builder work together.

I don't do office work at home.

I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.

I've never had a study in my life. I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.

All the scientists and technologists should work in appropriate region, specifically the rural technologies, to transform Indian rural sector.

An economically peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka is the dream of youth of the nation. My message for the youth is to collectively work for an inclusively developed Sri Lanka.

If four things are followed - having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work, and perseverance - then anything can be achieved.

It's when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that's the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.

Never stop fighting until you arrive at your destined place - that is, the unique you. Have an aim in life, continuously acquire knowledge, work hard, and have perseverance to realise the great life.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

You see, God helps only people who work hard. That principle is very clear.

I suggest that ten thousand Negroes march on Washington, D.C., the capital of the Nation, with the slogan, 'We loyal Negro American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country.'

There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.

Bollywood music is definitely a big part of Indian music and can be a great way to introduce people to the sound. But I hope to continue to incorporate other types of Indian music into my work.

For me, there is no day or night for music. I often work through the night - without phone calls disturbing me.

I divide criticism into two categories - one coming from those who understand music, who are worthy of being critical because they are knowledgeable about what they are saying, and then there is another category of people who would criticise you anyway, whether your work is good or bad.

I think I can get away, sometimes, with walking in the streets and not getting noticed. I like that. I want my work to get noticed, not me. And it's slowly getting there, which is good.

I usually work on a film soundtrack for two years, turning in a song every few months, and that keeps my creative energy high, because I'm constantly rotating projects. The trick is to make sure I don't work too hard and get exhausted.

If you respect a language and culture, it shows in your work.

The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done. I try to make sure that I don't repeat my music.

I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.

I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.

If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.

I hope to have more than one main weapon. I have the Phenomenal Forearm as we're calling it now, the Calf Crusher - the Styles Clash is still available. I like to have a lot of alternative moves to hit people with, and whatever seems to work is what I'll go with.

You just can't compare the WWE to anything else when it comes to sports entertainment. There is nothing like the WWE, nothing like this machine I am working for and I'm proud to work for.

I began to work the stage and get the audience into it. I also learned how to have fun out there. It is something I will never forget.

I don't think about my previous success. I'm happy that the work I've done has been very successful.

I don't want to abandon one work for the other, and I don't think I need to sacrifice anything to put my all into either one of them.

With a popular show, you know that there's expectations there, so that's a little nerve-wracking when you're new and you're just trying to find your legs on something, but it's exciting, too, because that's what we work so hard for.

There's not a day that I don't work on vocals, have vocal coaches, go to acting classes, read books.

I consider myself very fortunate. I mean, I think there's that old saying, 'Where there's a will, there's a way,' and I just have such a passion for jazz music and playing the piano that I just find a way to make it work, so to speak. Fortunately, I have so far.

I've been working for many years and I think I've managed to work with some of the best people in the business, which has been rewarding and an apprenticeship.

Make your work deeper and better than those before you, and eventually someone will notice. If you don't think the work is better than what you've seen, then go back until it is.

I'm not sure how to describe my style. A lot of my work is dark and looks a bit sad, which is strange because I'm such a smiley, over-the-top positive guy who wears gold shoes most days.

I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.

The thing about travelling is that you work hard and play hard, but you can do all those things without your parents knowing.

The work requires a moderately large investment in technological and theoretical developments and long periods of time to carry them out, without the pressure to achieve quick or short term results.

This work made me more and more interested in biological matter, and I decided that I really wanted to work on the X-ray analysis of biological molecules.

My work is focused on using data to tell stories and explore our common humanity.

Before 'Giant,' I had only ever worked with Michael Greif, Michael John LaChiusa and Kate Baldwin in readings. It's really exciting to be blessed with the opportunity to work with so many I would put in the 'genius' book.

You hear about Broadway your whole life, and I learned what it meant to work on Broadway in 'The Phantom of the Opera.'

All of a sudden, if you think about the entire ecosystem of connected devices that can pull down information, access content and allow me to share and work and communicate, the vast majority now are not Windows computers. They are iPhones. They are iPads. They are Android devices.

My co-founder Dylan Smith and I left our junior year of college to move to the Bay Area. To the horror of our friends' parents, we actually had two other friends drop out of college to work on the product. The four of us were just working non-stop growing Box.

I didn't just get to 75 years by tiptoeing. I had to work hard sometimes.

I'll be singing with The Blind Boys of Alabama, which is a great joy to me. I've done some work with them before, and they truly are amazing.

Kevin Systrom of Instagram used to work for us as a consultant in the early days of Mint. I knew him a long time ago. Maybe I could have gotten in there. But with photo sharing, I don't know if there's an obvious business model. I don't think there's a competitive, sustainable advantage.

The start-up life kept me busy and surfaced the problem of not being able to stay on top of my personal finances, which led me to invent Mint.com. I was working 80-hour weeks, and had done enough preliminary work and research to know I had a big idea: To make money management effortless and automated.

The typical workday, particularly in startup mode, is from nine to six or nine to seven, then you take a two-hour break to work out and eat dinner. By that time, you're relaxed, and then you work until midnight or one A.M. If there was no break with physical activity, you'd be more tired and less alert.

I love everyone over at Netflix. They're all fantastic and an absolute joy to work with.

It's very exciting to be able to just work in this business, let alone on stuff you are extremely proud of. So it does make me a little nervous, because 'Breaking Bad' is so special. It's great being part of something so great because people pay attention to you, hopefully because you're doing good work.

When I first started, I just wanted to work. I wouldn't necessarily do anything, but I'd pretty much almost do anything at the very beginning.

With this film, 'Need For Speed,' with this, we had a blank canvas to work with. What we had to do was have fast cars, and that's it.

When I'm out there, you just have to react. That's why you work on those throws. When you're in the moment, you can't think to yourself, 'How do I get this to go 47 yards and be 2 yards inside the sideline?'

I feel as if I've been fairly successful with maintaining a cohesive tone between the work I make as a photographer and as a director.

With the work that I do as a director, I've got dialogue, camera movement, and character blocking to help create a tone to the piece. In photography, those elements are somewhat void so that tone becomes a bit more subtle but still equally important.

I was a little, uh, incorrigible as a kid, so the kitchen was a good place to give me structure and balance. It taught me hard work, but then I grew to love it.

I hope I'm building a record of being a good team player and not just standing for my principles but being willing to work for them. I think when you do that and you work really hard, people take notice.

All my heroes wore coats and ties to work. What happened to men wearing hats? Maybe I should bring back hats.

I am uncomfortable talking about the things that I write. It seems unseemly to me. I have no problem at all when I see anybody else talking about the same project, but I feel my work should speak for itself.

My way of getting the best from people on a set is to notice their work, to make every prop master, every seamstress, part of 'The Newsroom' or 'The West Wing' or 'Steve Jobs.'

It's been a straight strip, I must tell you, I've enjoyed it all the way. If I'm saying things to make it sound like it's hard, hard work, it's not. It's beautiful work. It's fun work. It's everything you'd ever want to do.

Right now I'm doing four shows at a time, trying to read four outlines every week, four scripts every week, and watching four rough cuts, it's a lot of good work. It's fun to do it, but it does wear you out.

You can't predict a show, that is the damndest thing, you can't predict if a show is going to work or not until it's on the air.

Even among those who I would not count as 'friends,' I have met many people online who have simply commented on my work or are interested by what I do.

The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it.

I want to work with great directors. I've picked films based on the script or the character and seen them collapse because the directors were not strong visionaries.

People look at stuff like 'Godzilla' and 'Avengers' and think I only do blockbusters, or however you wanna put it, but in reality, I can make double or triple what I got paid for 'Avengers' by doing other stuff - there are other options, but I don't want to work with this person or that person, and so I don't do it.

The problem with independent films is that they can be hit or miss. I've seen scripts that have blown me away. But there have to be all the right ingredients in place to make them work: the director, cast, publicity, distribution.

Awards are not something that I measure my work by. I've been so fortunate and I've gotten to do such terrific things that it seems petty to look back and say, 'Oh, I should have gotten that prize.' I don't look at it that way.

It's every actor's dream to work in a hit show on Broadway and also shoot a television show.

Once I came to acting, it was almost a thing where there weren't enough hours in the day to work on stuff because I was so passionate about it.

Typecasting is an interesting thing because, in a way, if you're good at something, you're going to work at that thing. In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes.

I feel like after acting, the other half of why I love this business is the opportunity to work with and meet people who inspire you. That it pays my rent is a good bonus.

The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.

I think I really produce my best work in Iran.

I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. To say that would mean I'm just marketing my work!

There are at least two retrospectives of my work each year in some country.

When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness.

I honestly don't diet or work out regularly. I'm just always running around - you'll never catch me having a day on the sofa.

Originally, I wanted a pop career and formed a girl-band 'Genie Queen' managed by Andy McClusky from 'Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark', but it didn't work out. My brother John is the talented singer and song-writer with 'The Razz,' while my other brother Sean is a footballer for Telford United.

I think that's what really a substantial work is, it's forever. It's the truth now and it was the truth then, and it will be the truth tomorrow.

I've been watching 'The Cosby Show' and 'Roseanne' a lot right now, and those work so well because they're not, like, jokey comedies, they are coming from real characters. We want our show to be like that. A family show.

The minute you step off that podium is the minute you start preparing for the next world championship. That's kind of how I work. You celebrate for a brief moment, then you move on.

When I was in college, I learned to really take care of my body and figured out what works best for me and what doesn't work for me when it comes to my nutrition. That helped so much on the field because soccer is such a fitness-oriented game.

Whenever you get to win, you feel the satisfaction of all of your hard work, all the sacrifices, all the blood, sweat and tears. It feels right and makes you realise that you are really doing the right thing.

I have reaffirmed my political will to work towards national unity.

In the past, the West had tried to export one formula of democracy which should fit to the rest of the world, and they discovered that this doesn't work.

I am proud of my work for my country.

Many occasions I've sat down with Israelis to say, where do you see your country in 10 years time, and work me back, so we can figure out the synergies and the connections between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. No Israeli has ever been able to answer that question.

A birthday is just another day where you go to work and people give you love. Age is just a state of mind, and you are as old as you think you are. You have to count your blessings and be happy.

Every film for every actor is a make-or-break film. I believe every film has the power to break you or make you. So, an actor will treat every film like his last film. That's the way we need to work, and that's the way you can drum up that passion needed to do good work.

I think it's important for an actor to see the work they've done because every time you revisit a work you come up with a new way of improving it. It's a good way to brush up your craft and your skills, so I think it's a good thing to do, keep seeing your films.

There is one common thing in superstars - enthusiasm and humility towards their work. Off sets, they are big stars for others, and they carry themselves the way they want to. When they are working, they are not stars.

You can work really hard on your physicality, on your craft, on the films you do. You can choose the best of directors, the best of productions, get the best technicians, you can put your entire body and soul into the making of a film, but at the end of the day, it all depends on the mood of that one audience member that goes into that theater.

I'd love to work with Michelle Williams. I think that she's incredible. She's such a great actress and I love her.

I've been really lucky with the people that I've gotten to work with. I learn a lot from them, just by watching them.

Having traveled to parts of the world where war has done its usual nasty work on people's lives, I have come to develop a particular hatred for the shape, the look, the sound of the AK-47.

It's because of 'ER' that I've gotten the opportunity to get the work.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Oh, yes, you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn't get there.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day, that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

O man you are busy working for the world, and the world is busy trying to turn you out.

I had a feeling it was gonna work out because not only did I enjoy the music and hit it off with the guys, but I was into theatrical rock and was willing to wear makeup and do anything to make it.

I'm a piece of work, man. I will do what I want, at all times, always. Nobody's going to persuade me one way or another. I can't be persuaded. I take criticism, I listen, I analyze, but at the end of the day, I make the decisions. Because that's the way I started, and that's the way I'm going to finish.

I am much pleased to find how very well I stand work & how my powers of attention & continued effort increase.

I was described as a dreamer, a fantasist, even as the village idiot. I didn't care. What I cared about was convincing people to allow me to go on with my work.

Achievement results from work realizing ambition.

I want to continue doing as big a variety of things as I can do, and if that means I have the honor of getting to do more feature work, I would love that. I know that if I make any other long-term TV commitments, it's not going to be on a drama.

It's a lot of work and I also feel like I've done it. I miss comedy. And I also think that, from purely a logistical standpoint, that the day-to-day schedule on a comedy allows you to have a life, much more of a life, than on a drama.

I think work begets work.

My heroes are the camera crew and the electricians. They work such long hours.

Some people look for a certain structure in their lives that they're comfortable with. People who work hard on the road as truckers, people who work hard using their hands. Then there are people who are fortunate enough to have my life, people who play these characters who embody these qualities.

When I was growing up, my white friends would call me: 'Hey, Chief!' Even when I go to work now, people call me 'Chief.'

I'm not a non-profit person. I think of myself as an entrepreneur who wants to work on global education.

I just want to be in good things that I want to see, and I want to work with talented people who are smarter than myself.

I want to work with intelligent people and look for scripts that I think are intelligent and surprising.

I don't think healthcare's a right. The only right you have is the ability to go out on an even playing field and work, and then purchase health insurance, or whatever it is.

I mean, we sit around and we go, you know, 'Torture doesn't work.' Well, it's been around for 5,000 years. Most stuff that doesn't work goes the way of the dodo pretty quick, like waterbeds and 8-tracks and things like that.

If you go forward in the spirit of the original apostles and followers of Jesus Christ, trusting not in man but in the living God, he will enable you to pull down the strong holds of sin and Satan, and that work by which he is pleased will prosper in your hands.

Fame is like the dessert that comes with your achievements - it's not an achievement in itself, but sometimes it can overpower the work.

It's very confusing when fame comes early on in your career. You get a little bit bent out of shape in terms of what's important. Fame is like the dessert that comes with your achievements - it's not an achievement in itself, but sometimes it can overpower the work.

I think as more people use the phones to access the Internet, they have a lot less patience for trying to find things on the search engines. That is because you need to figure a lot of things out for search to work.

If large numbers of people believe they have no shot at a better life in the future, they will work less hard and generate fewer new ideas and businesses. The economy, as a whole, will be poorer.

The economy works best when better ideas win out over worse ideas, harder work wins out over less work, when it's a fair fight in the marketplace.

You know, I go to work in a great office every day, and the amount of freedom that goes with being a pro golfer on the tour is awesome. So I get to enjoy my weeks off away from the course, and then I get to go to work on some of the best golf courses in the world out here.

I'm not a good rapper. For whatever reason, my brain does not work that way. I just do the beginning, like, 'Yeah, yeah! Ha ha! Woo! What up? Come on! Get at me!' I'm Captain Hook.

Acting, believe it or not, can get very self-involved! I feel fortunate to have been able to work on things with people who have a very specific point of view and perspective, and who feel like they're doing something very active.

I'm constantly thinking about the role, and there's an infinite amount of questions you can ask yourself about a character to the point that it's hard to find the boundaries of when to not work.

Just having the internet is a weird and dangerous thing because people become accustomed to knowing things when they want to know them and not having to work for it. I definitely see the value in not knowing everything and having mystery in life and mystery in people.

The Marine Corps is some of the best acting training you could have. Having that responsibility for people's lives, suddenly time becomes a really valuable commodity and you want to make the most of it. And for acting, you just have to do the work, just keep doing it.

What is a struggle is that acting isn't a place where you go to work and you do that thing. There aren't set boundaries, like an office, where you go and work. For me, the work is always on my mind.

The artist finds, that the more he can confine his attention to a particular part of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the greater quantities.

I got into cars through my father. He used to work on cars. My job was to hold the light, which pretty much was the limit of my mechanical abilities.

I do like to keep mementos from my work, whether they be photos, the backs of make-up chairs or even props and clothes.

The process of rehearsal means you learn so much and really get the chance to develop your work on a character.

Every day is like Halloween or Christmas eve for me. I go to bed, and I'm so excited to get back to work. I'm very lucky that I have a career like that 'cause not many people do.

I once pitched this show that was just like 'Quantum Leap,' in terms of the set-up, and I got a pass because they said 'Quantum Leap' didn't work, even though it was on for six or seven seasons. You can't say 'Quantum Leap' didn't work!

Everything doesn't happen for a reason, if by this we mean evil is a part of God's plan. But God does ensure that evil will not prevail and that light will always, ultimately, overcome the darkness. If we follow God's lead, our work is to push back the darkness.

God seeks to influence humanity. This is at the heart of the Christmas story. It is the story of light coming into the darkness, of a Savior to show us the way, of light overcoming the darkness, of God's work to save the world.

Jesus' own witness of sacrificial love and forgiveness, and his work to heal the sick and care for those in need, represent God's ways and vision for us.

We don't need mandatory, non-sectarian prayers read over the loudspeaker to 'put God back in schools.' God never left the schools. God is still at work through the hundreds of thousands of gifted teachers and administrators, committed parents, and passionate volunteers who seek to help give our children 'a future with hope.'

What people are looking for are candidates and representatives that are going to work hard, tell it like it is. I'm unafraid to do things when it doesn't poll well.

Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.

I'm still awaiting the idea of drawing comics for a living being a reality. I feel like I've been dodging work for 20 years, and at some point, I'll have to get a real job.

I've always loved pinup art, and I've always enjoyed drawing women. I think it was a conscious decision that has resulted in me getting almost exclusive work on comics where the main character is female.

I have an office full of product from brands trying to be in videos and an inbox full of songs from artists, but at the end of the day if the artist doesn't support the brand or it doesn't make sense for the song, then it will never work. What we do is try to pair them up so that both sides are happy.

I initially wanted to work in the music industry more on the A&R side. While I was in school, I began working in the New Business department of an advertising firm, and very quickly I was responsible for roughly 70% of their business, so you could say I had a natural knack for the advertising world.

Pitbull is great with brands. Endorsements with hip-hop artists work because hip-hop artists typically set the most trends... It's every brand's goal to be seen in the mainstream, and hip-hop music has become mainstream music.

I try to go throughout my daily life just as if nothing has changed, but you don't have much anonymity anymore, which feels really good. People come up, and say hi and they enjoy your work.

The biggest risk I've ever taken is going on American Idol and trying to be myself. I wasn't going to try too hard to conform, and I knew that it could possibly not work out.

There's a certain level of pageantry with 'Idol,' and in order to work the show, you kind of have to feed into it.

I hate flying. Know why? Because no one really understands how planes actually work.

My job means I work late.

Novels are pirated all the time, but it's hard to imagine that you're at work and you open up the attachment that your brother sent you and it's the new Phillip Roth novel.

Sony is the coolest studio. They are really amazing. I think part of it comes from they're not an American corporation. They don't work by quite the same rules. And their studio heads have a lot of autonomy.

We lost our minds in the '80s and '90s, we really as a society just felt that everyone could only care about themselves. There was no responsibility to discuss what's going on in your town, your state, your nation. And it was a blast, it was really fun, but it doesn't work.

I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself. Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11.

The main difference between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution was that the former was mostly the work of Communist party members and others who wanted to bring about 'socialism with a human face.'

I can't be a hypocrite as a coach because as a player that's what I wanted. I wanted feedback, I wanted communication from the boss. I showed up for work, you can yell at me if you want, but I want input. So that's the kind of coach I want to be.

I take what I see work. I'm a strict believer in the scientific principle of believing nothing, only taking the best evidence available at the present time, interpreting it as best you can, and leaving your mind open to the fact that new evidence will appear tomorrow.

For 100 m., you have to go out fast but also bring it back, so we've been doing a lot of work on the back-end speed.

I'm not a cheater, but if I win Olympic gold and people are looking at me and saying I am a cheat because I've won, it's hugely disrespectful given the hard work I've put in.

My work is always more emotional than I am. My characters say things to each other that I get accused of not being able to say to my girlfriend.

Some of the greatest works of theater, from Chekov's work to modern playwrights', consist of just a few people in a room with no one leaving.

The biggest audience for Off Broadway is mostly coming in on a train - either Upper East Siders or Metro-North. I go to the theater, and everyone around me is over 50. How interested will they be in my kind of work?

When I work in the theater, you know you'll get this almost devotional, religious experience where you're breaking bread with everyone every day.

To combat the monotony of gym workouts, I started playing soccer. I looked at workouts as training sessions. My soccer training includes squats, pushups, resistance-band work, and sprints. Ninety minutes of running became part of my love of the game rather than a chore.

I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep. But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work.

Once when I went over my work with my Washington University professor, the late great Stanley Elkin, he pointed to a passage of mine and said: 'Stop vamping.' It has remained a caution.

I do love the films I've done in the past. I work hard in my movies and my friends work hard and we're trying to make people laugh and I'm very proud of that.

I don't think about that. I wasn't a kid growing up saying one day I'll get an Oscar and make a speech. That wasn't on my mind. So what I do is the best work I can do.

I don't know who I touch and who I don't. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don't have any secrets. I don't know the reasons I've been so well received.

I go home at the end of the day and I rarely talk about what I did that day. So my wife's experience is just like that of anybody else whose husband goes away to a blue collar job and comes home bruised and dirty and often proud of the work that they're doing.

Prayer doesn't work because someone out there is listening, it works because someone in here is listening. I've paid attention. I've pictured what I want to happen in my life. I've meditated extensively on my family, my future, my past actions and what did and didn't work for me about them.

When I finally got up to Industrial Light And Magic to work on the 'Star Wars' movies as a model-maker, it felt like dying and going to heaven.

Whether it's the experiments on 'MythBusters' or my earlier work in special effects for movies, I've regularly had to do things that were never done before, from designing complex motion-control rigs to figuring out how to animate chocolate.

I don't know if there's a particular project, but one movie that I was really disappointed I didn't get to work on was Judd Apatow's 'Walk Hard.'

I am not very regimented unless I have to be. I wish I was someone that could just write every day, but I tend to work on specific projects for a specific period of time and then stop.

I generally prefer to come in to the studio with a fully written song and then work on the arrangement with the band. Sometimes even the arrangements are pretty much already worked out in my head, but other times we experiment.

I just like to stay busy, and I like to work with interesting people.

Most of the jobs I've gotten are from people calling me. I don't actively solicit a lot of work like that, but maybe I should.

With Fountains Of Wayne, I almost always start with lyrics - maybe not the entire lyric, but I almost always need a couplet or something, and then I work from there. With Ivy, it's much more about the atmosphere and the vibe.

A little secret - I'm the child of a shrink. I am, my mom's a shrink, and my father's a lawyer. So believe me, I analyze and negotiate. That is a huge amount of the director's work, especially when you're working with people who - such a variety.

I'm a huge fan of the game. It's beyond a fringe benefit of obviously getting to work at the league office. I watch a ton of games in person, on television, on all forms of new media I follow the league. And so it's just beyond my wildest imaginations to me to now be the commissioner of the NBA.

Auditioning and actually acting on a set are two different things. When you audition, you're in a room and you don't have anything to play with and you don't have anything physically in the room. Whereas on set, you have direction, you have costumes, and you have other actors to work with. It's a completely different thing.