Americans have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator', we say 'lift'... they say 'President', we say 'stupid psychopathic git.
Being a giver is not about saying yes to all of the people all of the time to all of the requests.
I keep saying, the older I get, the younger my audience gets. Because 'Wicked' and 'Rent' and 'Glee,' each one was a young audience, so it's a great thing to have, so then you know that as they get older and have kids, they'll maybe still buy tickets to my shows when I'm 80 and in Vegas!
We never waste space saying, 'On the one hand.' We just state an opinion in a Godlike voice.
I've really got no complaints about the way I played, just extremely frustrating with the putter and I'm sure there's a lot of other players saying the same thing except the guy who's going to win the golf tournament.
Any comic is a very good actor. Look at Don Rickles. He is saying the same joke every night for 20 years and making it look like he just thought of it.
Even when things are at their worst, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'Good story!'
When I diagnose my depression now, I think it was partially about saying goodbye to these kids that I always expected to have but already knew that I wouldn't.
Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.
I don't write listening to music, and in a way it seems silly that any writer should have to explain why not, as it's possibly no different from saying you don't eat gourmet dinners or play tennis while you're at the keyboard.
Learn graceful ways of saying no and of pointing out that this pressure to do something is not in line with most people's wishes.
I went to grad school because I wanted to learn the rules so I would know how to break them. Breaking the rules is saying, 'I'm breaking in, OK? I'm breaking in your very comfortable little house over here, and I'm going to take a room.'
I remember watching the Grammys and looking at the performances and crying to my mom, saying how much I wanted to be there.
I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph.
I used to get a lot of people saying 'Oh, you are such a lucky granny.' But the fact of the matter is you can be a grandma at 35 these days.
Looking back at my school reports, I start off as quite a swotty kid, and then when I get to 12 or 13, my teachers start saying: 'Lee has started to joke around a lot in class.' After that, it's a steady graph of decline, with the jokes increasing and increasing.
I have years of saying ideas that are not listened to. Then, weeks after, of producers finding out that I was right when some other guy comes in and says it. Sometimes I just tell my idea to my editor or to some other guy with maybe gray hair to share it, and then it's brilliant!
I don't want people saying, 'Should we get a female director?' I want to hear, 'Should we get a great director for this movie?'
In the U.S., it's like, you start with a great script, and then on set - not everybody, but definitely in the Apatow group - you go off, and you're improvising on camera. So while you're on camera, you're saying things that no one else has ever heard before during the actual take.
In general, I think people are worried about saying the wrong thing to any grieving person. On a very basic level, I think they're frightened of touching off tears or sorrow, as though someone tearing up at the mention of unhappy news would be the mentioner's fault.
