Primetime Emmy Award Winners

"I’m really hoping that in some movie I’m doing, I die — but I die, me, Donald — and they’re able to use my funeral and the coffin … That would be absolutely ideal. I would love that."

"I wanted it to be a piece of film rather than a video promotional clip. I wanted it to be a short piece of film that would hopefully do justice to the original book and let people understand the story that couldn’t really be explained in the song. So we wanted a great actor — we thought of Donald Sutherland — and he was so encouraging and made it so easy for me. Whenever we were acting, he was my father. I just had to react to him like a child. He made it very easy."

"[Asked if he was conscious of being an unusual actor] Well, I was always cast as an artistic homicidal maniac. But at least I was artistic!"

"I heard a voice saying hello and I looked down. Standing down there was a very small Kate Bush. … She wanted to explain what her video was about. I let her in. She sat down, said some stuff. All I heard was "Wilhelm Reich". I’d taken an underground copy of his The Mass Psychology of Fascism with me when I went to film Bertolucci’s Novecento in Parma. Reich’s work informed the psychological foundations of Attila Mellanchini, the character Bernardo had cast me to play. Everything about Reich echoed through me. He was there then and now he was here. Sitting across from me in the person of the very eloquent Kate Bush. Synchronicity. Perfect. She talked some more. I said OK and we made Cloudbusting. She’s wonderful, Kate Bush. Wonderful. I love that I did it."

"For an era when women were expected to conform, these women are totally in charge of the show. To read a piece of material from a period drama told from the woman’s perspective is just so unique."

"I went through this period where I was just obsessed with makeup and I wore a ton of it, and then I suddenly realized how much I was wearing, and the fact that I was spending all this money. I think now I'm just trying to be more comfortable with what I have rather than having to cover up. But I do love putting makeup on for a night out."

"It was really shocking; it was the first time I had ever been dragged into something like that. And it wasn't just me, it was my family. I had seen the absurdity of what I was being accused of, and what my partner was being accused of. I decided for my own health that I was not going to try and convince these people otherwise. I just wasn't going to do it."

"Follow your heart’s truth with no need for personal gain other than the feeling produced when doing what you truly love."

"We need to stop separating ourselves by how dark or how light we are."

"Everything happens for a reason, and everything is going to turn out the way it should."

"It's unfortunate that the "hustle hard" thing can be toxic, too, to our lives. It's OK to grind, but don't grind your wheels off, pooh. Work hard, but work smart. Be able to leave a space for you to still enjoy it to where you're not looking at the end and resenting something you care about."

"I think you can do anything you put your mind to. I think your mind is the worst thing you can use as a reason to not do something."

"Anytime you see Beyonce, Jay Z, Kanye West. Anytime a young black person's doing good, that's motivation for everybody else. Anytime, anytime, it's motivation. Use that fuel to push you forward. That's what I did"

"You can do anything as long as you don't stop believing. When it is meant to be, it will be. You just have to follow your heart."

"God is so good. Always follow your dreams, own your purpose! Embrace God’s anointing."

"You decide what beautiful means to you. We don’t all need to look the same. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you decide what’s beautiful in the world. Not the other way around."

"Learn to love yourself and all that other stuff will not matter."

"A great example of colorism is to believe I can be compared to anyone,"

"Often, kids don’t appreciate the choices available, as if it’s either the street or nothing."

"I wrote the book not to have a catharsis, because I was under the impression that I already have had many catharses as one could have."

"There was so much suffering, She really, really suffered in a way that — we were desperate to help relieve her suffering, and so it's just a blessing that she's not suffering anymore."

"All that hitting out and pulling and tugging every performance for two years was probably a kind of therapy for me, a release. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened to me if I adjust had to hold it all in."

"I’ve had trouble sleeping for a good part of my life, And what I would always do is start at the very beginning of ‘The Miracle Worker’ and say all of the lines, all the way through."

"You know sometimes when you act, you work through some things as if you would in a therapy session."

"Whatever this thing is that takes over you, that says that you are worthless, that really the only answer is to kill yourself, is so much more powerful that that's... the calling you relate to."

"I think maybe the most important part of her legacy is her acting. Above and beyond anything, the reason any of the other stuff is possible in terms of the scope of the impact that she was able to have with people was her talent and her work and her work ethic, her discipline. She worked extremely hard."

"I always felt pressure as a child to perform, but again that came from the people who were managing my career. There was no such thing as halfway, I had to do it to the hilt."

"That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. But then, things often don’t turn out the way you plan."

"She’s much more together and mature. She’s raised two kids and five stepchildren, and she’s a grandmother. I can’t get over that."

"I’m nothing like my character. Oh no!"

"…It’s an interesting story. I think that people are gonna love [it]."

"There seems to be a prejudice against television directors. Now there are a lot of bad television directors. If you do the same sort of television for a long enough time, something happens to your imagination. That's why I won't even consider certain television shows anymore. The people I like to work with are the ones who have some sort of vision about what they're doing."

"There is going to be an inescapable tension between – and I’m going to call them the oligarchy; the establishment, the monied classes, the one percent – and the rest of us and the rest of humanity. And without some strong institution like the medieval church, to intervene, people are just going to go out for themselves. And there were some economic theorists who believe that’s the best thing for society, and they cling to that."

"Being a composer, although I think it’s an incredible job, it’s not special. There are a lot of people who are composers. There are a lot of people who think they’re composers. There are a lot of people who are songwriters. There are a lot of people who have a musical idea. There are more now probably than there were when I began. There’s more opportunity, I think, for composers than there was back then, but there are many more composers now. So, you’re not special. You’ve got to find some way of getting hired. And I think the more you can refine your objectives, the better you are. The best advice I got about this when I was just starting was, “Ignore all of my advice and do anything you can think of”. And as I said, just get started. Just start."

"You try to be a model of kindness and love and forgiveness to all those around you, because you have received kindness and love and forgiveness from God through Christ. That's what Christianity is. You don't see that too much. Sometimes that has been the fault of the Christian community, or the ignorance of the secular community."

"There’s a misconception that romance you had when first married is supposed to be there all the time, or that’s a sign the marriage is over or that you no longer love each other. When things get tough, you have to be able to withstand the pressure. I’m a big proponent of marriage counseling. You have to know yourself and how you respond to things, and that’s where therapy really helps. If you can’t afford therapy, there are plenty of excellent books that tell you many of the same things."

"The beauty of being a Catholic is, this is not the last time I will ever see my mother, we will be together again, there’s just this period where she’s not here, and so it’s not the most desperate feeling. It’s pretty bad, but it’s not the worst."

"Film music is always and only accompaniment. Whether it’s loud or occasionally important in itself, it’s what it is because of where it is — how it’s placed in the film. In a film score, the composer literally measures every note, because it has to be synchronized with the picture. The film strictly determines every element of a film score. The only reason music exists in film is to help tell a story. No one hires a composer for a film to write pretty flute lines. I generally don’t get concerned about this, but I’ll admit to getting irritated or disappointed at times on how the music is used after I’ve composed it. In the United States, all film composers work under a condition called ‘Work for Hire’. Aesthetically, it can be soul-sucking."

"The Broadway thing is full-on—we were nine months in, six days a week. When you get a week off, there’s something so miraculous about it and freeing. I was sitting on a beach, not a care in the world, and for some reason, the thought came into my head: What do you want to do? And the first two things had nothing to do with work—then literally, I thought: Deadpool-Wolverine. I want to do that movie. That’s what I want."

"I think every male at some point thinks about playing James Bond so it was not right then, but it may be right if it comes back. I think you've got to be scared as an actor and keep taking risks. It doesn't always work out but it's a healthy place to be."

"This is pretty much one of those roles that had me pinching myself all the way through the shoot. I got to shoot a big-budget, shamelessly old-fashioned romantic epic set against one of the most turbulent times in my native country's history, while, at the same time, celebrating that country's natural beauty, its people, its cultures... I'll die a happy man knowing I've got this film on my CV."

"It's always the suit's fault. Never the actor."

"I was there for three weeks before I shot a single thing. And that first day of shooting... I was so nervous, man. Everyone was sort of going "Who's this guy?" You know, there was a lot of that, and... You know, "Is he gonna deliver?", and that-- You can feel all that kinda pressure."

"Nothing has ever opened my eyes like transcendental meditation has. It makes me calm and happy, and, well, it gives me some peace and quiet in what’s a pretty chaotic life!"

"When I walk down the street and people say, 'I knew what to do because of watching your show (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit). I knew not to shower. I reported immediately. I took myself to the hospital instead of saying forget it, forget this ever happened, That's what I'm most proud of."

"I truly enjoy working with other composers. You can learn a lot from each other and it's always amazing to see what the other composer comes up with."

"When I write I always have the picture running in the background so as I do my arrangements in a scene, I have to go back over and over again. And I play every single instrument during my demo, so that’s a very time-consuming process. And while I do that I see it over and over and over. I get new ideas as I’m doing it and you really get attached to a scene, so I always have the picture on when I write to a scene, so that’s why I see it so many times."

"I’m one of those artists who, if you’d let me tweak, would probably keep going and going so it comes to the point where sometimes you just have to let go and make the decision, “Okay, that’s it.” That’s always hard, because you always have new ideas and sometimes they might even be changes that aren’t even audible to anybody else but it just might be an arrangement within the piece or an instrument that I’d like to take out, or change the octave or things like that. I like to tweak, so sometimes, yeah, it’s a good thing to have a deadline. You have to deliver and that’s it."

"I would say that I’ve tried to listen to the voice inside…Luckily, from a very early age, I was able to understand that when things don’t feel quite right, that was probably not the role for me."

"We’re in a time when film is so loud and the audience is looking for shocking. It’s hard to convince people that there is an audience out there that wants quiet stories."