As authors evolve and try to trace the precedents that have shaped their work, it sometimes becomes a matter of identifying the shadowy figure in the back row of the mental photograph, or of grabbing at the tail of a memory that's just slipping out the window into thin air.
If we could all figure out a way to just be true to ourselves and have a good time doing what we're doing, it would be a lot more fun.
When I work, I like to just kind of stay quiet, stay to myself. I like to walk around a lot and figure out what's gonna happen in the scene and try to get my head straight.
Working with a guy like Ice Cube on 'Ride Along,' you learn so much. He's a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn't do. I do nothing but soak up information.
John Lewis Gaddis is not only the favorite historian of the Reagan administration, but he's regarded as the dean of Cold War scholarship, the leading figure in the American Cold War scholarship, a professor at Yale.
As women, we're trying to be the best mothers and partners and have careers. We're trying to do so much. It's okay to say to other women, 'How do you do this?' Because I honestly don't know. The more we are honest, the more you realize we're all just trying to figure this out.
I can go into a restaurant; I might have to go a few times, taste something, love it and figure out exactly what is in there, and go home and duplicate it.
It took years for me to figure out what my body needs and that what works for my friends doesn't necessarily work for me. Doing yoga five times a week has transformed my body.
Vice presidents are supposed to be eternally loyal, which is why it is so difficult for some to figure out how to succeed their bosses.
What I aspire to do, and what I try the hardest to do, is write stuff that's very personal in its way. I figure I can only say things the way I say them, so I'm trying to do something that is kind of anti-generic.
I'm a Jewish son of Russian-Hungarian heritage parents. Humor was very important. My whole goal was to make my parents laugh. And my whole strategy as a young man was, if I could make them laugh, I could have enough time to figure out what to do next.
The way that Lucasfilm used ILM was George never restricted his thinking to things that he knew could be executed with the tools at the time. He would write what he thought would be cool and what he wanted from a storytelling standpoint with the assumption that, 'Well, they'll figure it out!'
I sequence during the entire recording process. The sequencing changes as I'm recording and as I'm listening. From when I'm, like, four songs in, I start trying to figure out which song should come after which. Which is important, and it changes as the album goes.
There was this song I was working on called 'Swing.' It was almost finished, but there was something missing, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. And then this little piece of information - this little tweet - came to the forefront of my mind.
When I was 26, 27 years old I was running a kitchen in New York, and I was a raving lunatic. The older you get, you figure out you don't need to do that. You realize at a certain point, there's a certain gravity to what you say and what you do. If that's not enough, all the yelling in the world is not going to matter.
Some of us get a feeling when we hear music and we feel music, and you want to figure out how to continue to feel that.
How many whales do we really need? I figure five. One for each ocean.
I have some role models. In Brazil, they are mostly writers. A writer named Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto is my favorite. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is also a very important figure for me.
Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I'm such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a unique campaign that fits the way I operate.
When you campaign and have to participate in so many debates just to the win the nomination of your party, you've had a lot of practice. You get to figure out as you go from one debate to another where you made your mistakes. By the time you get to the big debate you're pretty polished.
I had my daughter when I was pretty young, 28, and I had to sacrifice not going out with my friends, and I had to figure out how to juggle both raising her and also a very demanding job.
The most difficult part of Brexit will be to figure out the trade regime between the U.K. and the rest of the E.U. because the level of trade integration between the members of the E.U. is the deepest in the world and integrates regulations that govern how products and services are produced and sold within the E.U.
Relationships are important, but stay focused on all the things that are important. Figure out what you want.
It's not for everybody to tweet, it's for everybody to follow. The more people figure that out, they see it's RSS-plus. It's literally the place you check for information.
I wanted to continue doing my work, but I had to figure out how. And so what I have basically come up with is that I still go to Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and many of these places that are rife with war, but I don't go directly to the front line.
When I got to 'Saturday Night Live,' it was a lot like going from pre-school to Harvard, and it took a long time to figure stuff out.
There is constant talk about the intermarriage crisis: who is a Jew and how we define a Jew. That doesn't go over well with young Jews trying to figure out whether they want to be a part of this thing or not.
I've loved some gadgets that were not worthy, and I've loved gadgets that I would have loved more if I had waited for their developers to figure out how to really make them work, but I loved them anyway.
'MasterChef' is the search for America's culinary amateur talent, so this is a search for the best home cook in America, and it's our job to figure out who that is.
When I hear somebody like Hayes Carll write a song that's touching and poignant and sad and funny all at the same time, it motivates me to step my game up and try to figure out a way to get more different emotions into one line or one song.
I've never wanted my kid faced with the idea of, 'Who's the fat guy sitting in the living room? What the hell is he doing?' I figure I might as well go to work so he can say his dad works.
You can write whatever you want about me in websites and newspapers, but no one really knows me. They get the idea that I'm a tough, heroic figure, but I'm a sensitive pussycat.
Be real with yourself in whatever area of your life and your game that you need improvement on. Once you figure that out, you just have to go out and work on it. For me, it's footwork. I constantly work on it, and it's a never-ending process.
When you're a liar, a person of low moral fortitude, really any explanation you need to be true can be true. Especially if you're smart enough. You can figure out a way to justify anything.
Grease and starch just always win over protein. In food as in so many things. Look around you, that's what our whole country is based on. It's amazing that Michael Jordan can be an iconic figure because he's basically just protein.
If you can figure out where you fit into any particular story, you'll be okay. When you're not quite sure where you fit in, you try to be too many parts of the story. You gild the lily. I see it all the time.