A Quote by Brent Spiner

Basically, my deal is that I choose roles based on three criteria. One is the role, obviously, if it's something that speaks to me. Two is, are they gonna pay me? And three is, who am I gonna work with? And, really, if one of those is there, I'm pretty likely to do it, but it's particularly important to me who I'm going to work with, 'cause that's part of the joy.
I want to work with people that frighten me and excite me, and characters that I don't believe I'm the best person for the part but I'm still gonna try anyway. Those are my favorite roles.
I can't be bought with money. If someone calls me and asks me to work for them for three or four years, and they'll pay me well to build their vacation home, I ask myself why I should work three or four years on something like that.
So as long as I'm a working actor, I can improve. I want to work with people that frighten me and excite me, and characters that I don't believe I'm the best person for the part but I'm still gonna try anyway. Those are my favorite roles.
I don't look at things goin', 'Oh, is this gonna make me rich? Is this gonna make me a star? Am I gonna win awards?' If all that stuff happens, great. Who cares? I still have to wake up in the morning and go to work and be happy to do it.
I work 'cause I have to pay the bills. But I also work 'cause I love it. I don't know what I'd do with me if I didn't have this work. It's what I've done all my life. It's my motivation. It's my satisfaction. It's my joy to stand in front of an audience to sing, to come back home and write songs. Man, it's amazing for me.
Sometimes you're gonna write a song and it's not gonna be right from the beginning. And you're just gonna have to work through that wall. But if you know something is there, you've gotta just keep doing it until you get it right. So, I'll work on a song for three months if I have to, to get it right.
Music was my way out. School was the plan B, just in case music didn't work out. I didn't know it was gonna work out. I just felt like, 'If I'm doing these two things, something's going to get me up there. Something's going to make me successful.'
When I choose a role, I look for that spark that tells me it's going to work. Is the role fresh? What does it have for the actor in me? Those are the only things any actor should be concerned about, really.
The bottom line is that I'm an actor, so when somebody pitches me a great part, it's a no-brainer. You never know what it's gonna be like, in terms of the actual experience. You can be really excited about a part that can turn out shitty, you can have a bad time, there's a bad egg or two or three, in the bunch, or the producers are weird, or something like that.
So, it's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be really hard. We're gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day. Will you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? Thirty years from now, forty years from now? What's it look like? If it's with him- go. Go! I lost you once, I think I can do it again, if I thought that's what you really wanted. But don't you take the easy way out.
It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.
People have told me, 'You shouldn't bring your daughter onto the podium, 'cause it's the workplace,' and things like that. But I'm not gonna really listen to that. I'm gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything'll be all right.
I feel like, when we're kids, you're sold into this fairy tale of what love is. That Prince Charming's gonna come along and save you and you're gonna live happily ever after. They're gonna rescue me from the Bronx, and we're gonna go off and live in a castle somewhere and it's gonna be awesome. He's gonna love me forever, and I'm gonna love him forever, and it's gonna be real easy. And it's so different than that.
There's a long history of presidents coming in, saying they're gonna to take on the bureaucracy. What they really mean is they're gonna try to shift the emphasis of where those bureaucrats are gonna work and how they're gonna spend their time towards achieving objectives that presidents want to achieve.
It doesn't matter who the candidates are. It doesn't matter the campaign. You know that's gonna happen. The Washington Post is gonna do it, the New York Times is gonna do it, the three networks gonna do it, CNN's gonna do it, MSNBC gonna do it, all the newspapers are gonna do it. For the vast majority of them. There are some exceptions. That sameness ends up being its own authority. If everywhere you look in the media tells you the same thing, you don't have to research.
I am straight forward; I am not manipulative; I am not two-faced. And I think that that has served me well in all of my roles, particularly as a diplomat, because people knew if I said something, I meant it. If I said no, I meant no, and if I said we could make this work, we would make it work.
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