Giving up my scotch? My Macallan 18? That was hard for me! Though now that doesn't even sound good, being pregnant. You crave other things. A big thing of water sounds great!
Well, things hold up even if they sound dated. It can be very difficult to listen to 80s pop songs with really, really gigantic smashed drum sounds. You just want to turn that gated reverb down on the snare. It sounds wrong now. It sounds amateurish. And ugly. But at the time it sounded state-of-the-art. So yeah, I think it's important not to sound state-of-the-art in a way that anybody else is going to sound. Or you'll quickly sound like yesterday's state-of-the-art.
You know how we make a Scotch and water in this home?" "No, sir," Gus said. "We pour Scotch into a glass and then call to mind thoughts of water, and then we mix the actual Scotch with the abstracted idea of water.
When you can make it this simple, though, just do the right thing. Even if you could get away with less. Even when other people are doing the wrong thing. Even though the wrong thing seems like no big deal.
Being pregnant is a wonderful thing. I have never understood why people make such a big deal of it though.
A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma.
When I got pregnant, I had to concentrate on being pregnant for a whole nine months, even though I knew it was ruining my career at the time.
I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page. Some people write for the page, and that's a whole other thing. I'm going for what it sounds like right away, so it may not even look good on the page.
If the US had a relationship with Russia, North Korea - which is our single biggest problem right now - North Korea, it would be helped a lot. I think I'm doing very well with respect to China. They've cut off financing; they've cut off bank lines; they've cut off lots of oil and lots of other things. And it's having a big impact. But Russia, on the other hand, may be making up the difference. And if they are, that's not a good thing. So having a relationship with Russia would be a great thing - not a good thing - it would be a great thing, especially as it relates to North Korea.
Ministry of Sound was actually the first club I ever played in the UK, it must have been around 1993. Being invited to play was a big thing and visited many times since - The Gallery always has a great crowd, great sound system and just a great night.
There's nothing wrong with being proud of America, believing that America can do great things. America can do great things, it has done great things. I think we have to have the self-awareness to recognize that the world is a very, very big place, that we could be a force for good things in the world, but we have to have the humility to recognize that sometimes even when we think we're acting from the best of motives our own idealism can be infected by self-interest. Other people in other countries can see it sometimes better than we can.
A long-term relationship is about showing up and working hard and banking on each other. If one's down, the other might be up and can help the other one up, and sometimes you're both down and you just [band] together. Endurance is a big theme of it for me. That might not sound romantic, but I kind of think that it is.
I remember when I got pregnant, I had several peers of mine, women, who said to me, 'Now that you're pregnant, you're probably gonna give up the music thing, right?' I was like, 'I'm not crippled. I'm just having a baby.'
The whole of the life -- even the hard -- is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. These are new language lessons, and I live them out. There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.
I think that at the time, when I was first pregnant, it was hard to make the transition from being totally self-involved to not being able to think about myself at all. At the end of the day, I think that's the best thing that someone can go through. I think it makes you a better person. It doesn't mean that people who don't go through that aren't good people. For me, it was a good thing.
Change for me was really hard because I had built myself up to be a certain kind of man my whole life, as men are where I come from. I thought I got to handle things different that's gonna make me feel like a real pussy. For me it was hard to turn the other cheek. Even though it's a stronger choice. It was very hard to make the change, but I had to in order to survive. Otherwise they would have won.
Well, between Scotch and nothin', I suppose I'd take Scotch. It's the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find.