You have the ability to decide what you think. Or, you can choose NOT to think.

Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for.

What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?”

People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainty of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.

happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.

The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.

99% of your thoughts are useless.

“How do I train myself to stop thinking useless thoughts?” Awareness. That’s where it starts. Every time you start drifting off, become aware of it. Just observe your brain. Step outside yourself and just observe the crazy shit you’re thinking about.

Set priorities on Sunday. I outline my weekly priorities and what I want to have accomplished by the following Sunday.

Map out work, play, fit, and push. Work: For each day, I outline my “Top 3,” meaning the three most important things I will have accomplished by the end of the day.

Play: Play enables me to self-express, reflect, and give my ideas space, which shows up positively in my work.

Fit: Movement keeps ideas moving forward so I aim to move my body for at least 30 minutes each day.

Push: Since learning and growth is important to me, I do something that scares me (almost) every day. This may be asking someone whom I deeply respect for an interview or writing about a topic that makes me feel vulnerable.

Batch your days. Batching actions into specific days and creating time for creativity.

CREATE on Monday/Wednesday/Friday: I create holes in my schedule for thinking and creating. On these days, I pay attention to my body and take breaks as needed.

CALLS and MEETINGS on Tuesday/Thursday: When possible, I avoid phone calls and meetings because I find them typically unproductive and often easy to solve via email.

SPONTANEOUS Saturday: With so much structure, I make room for spontaneity. On Saturday, I let go and go where the day takes me. Balancing structure with a day of free-spiritedness makes me feel whole.

INTENTIONAL Sunday: Plan for the week ahead.

The frog enjoys itself in water but not in hot water.

I have always believed that we all have male and female within us.

I've just finished reading 'The Second Plane,' and I think it's some of the best non-fiction I've ever read.

Making children cry for a photographer can be considered mean. But I would say that making children laugh and show off their jeans for an apparel ad is just as exploitative and less natural. Toddlers' natural state, like, 30 percent of the time, is crying, and it doesn't indicate pain or suffering.

I'm in the process of trying to organize my DVDs into some kind of order and it's taking me weeks. I have everything from obscure 'Antonioni' to 'Terminator Salvation.'

When all the world appears to be in a tumult, and nature itself is feeling the assault of climate change, the seasons retain their essential rhythm. Yes, fall gives us a premonition of winter, but then, winter, will be forced to relent, once again, to the new beginnings of soft greens, longer light, and the sweet air of spring.

! want to leverage the creativity of researchers across mathematics, statistics, data mining, computer science, biology, medicine, and the public at large.

The conservative movement was told to curl up in a fetal position and just stay there for the next eight years, thank you very much. Well, how things have changed.

I had been looking for a New York apartment, but I said, Why not give LA a go?

I'm an artist; affirmation is like catnip to me.

My plumbing is no one's business but my own.

One must know combinations, one must have a true knowledge of food to be in the moment.

When did I learn the Bible? When I was four or five years old. It's still the pull of my childhood, a fascination with the vanished world, and I can find everything except that world.

It's interesting - a lot of good actors are good mimes. But I'm terrible. If I tried to do an impression, nobody would know what I was doing.

I'm not an A student; I'm not even a B student, but I've gotten a lot better with the reading because of texts. And I can voice-text and say whatever I want to people.

I think, in general, it's better not to respond to reviews of your work.

The price of shallow sex may be a corresponding loss of capacity for deep love.

Success shuns the man who lacks ideas.

Nobody ever died of discomfort yet living in the name of comfort has killed more ideas more opportunities more actions and more growth than everything else combined. Comfort kills

Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can't. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time. The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.

I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel... I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

I definitely wanted to be famous as a kid, but as I've gotten older, I feel less comfortable with it.

People instantly assume you can't have a platonic friendship with someone of the opposite sex. I think this may be specific to L.A. - or America.