It's hard to find people to trust in the record industry, always. It's an industry with a lot of bullshit. There's a lot of people who are in positions of power that really know nothing and care for nothing. So I think, yeah, you learn pretty early on that you've really got to trust yourself more than anybody else, and that nobody's going to care about what you do more than you.
My gut is my No. 1 asset. I also like to draw from a lot of people, and I ask a lot of questions. I'll literally show my ideas to 500 different people and get their opinions, and, in the end, after digesting all their opinions, I just trust my gut.
Call it loyalty, call it what you want, but I suppose I've got people up here who I'm really tight with, we've made a lot of great bonds over the last few years and I've got people in my corner I can trust.
As with any music that one feels quite close to, I'm very critical, too. I care a lot. I pay a lot of attention.
Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.
You don't accomplish a lot by changing people's opinions by shoving facts down their throat. I think you change people's opinions by opening your heart up and showing the parallels between you and another person. That's how people's ideas shift.
I've got quite a few friends in the comedy world as you meet a lot of people.
My memories mean a lot to me, and I hold them close to my heart.
I would suggest that people do need to trust someone, to think they care about you. I believe that in my heart.
The important thing is to realize that no matter what people's opinions may be, they're only just that - people's opinions. You have to believe in your heart what you know to be true about yourself. And let that be that.
If I can feel that actual people made the thing, and that they have deeply felt opinions about it, and care about this, and don't care about that and so on and so on - then I think it falls into the 'independent' file.
While novels are fiction, mine are usually very close to my heart. Like my other books, 'The Lemon Orchard' is inspired by something I care about. I care so deeply. The stories are my dreams, and I want to do a lot of research. Roberto is based on a real live friend of mine named Armando who worked in my garden.
Dreams are always crushing when they don't come true. But it's the simple dreams that are often the most painful because they seem so personal, so reasonable, so attainable. You're always close enough to touch, but never quite close enough to hold and it's enough to break your heart.
A lot of times I talk to people, they say they don't trust the doctors, they don't trust the hospitals and that kind of stuff. Well, if you go to the hospital, you've got to trust somebody.
If you can't trust your boss - or your pension company - to take care of your investment, who can you trust? The vast majority of company chiefs take their responsibilities seriously and protect their workers' final salary pensions. But for too long, the reckless few playing fast and loose with people's futures have got away scot-free.
When I got diagnosed, the more research I did about it - MS overall, as a subject, as a disease - there's a lot of misconceptions and there's a lot of unknowns about it, and there wasn't anyone out that was close to my age or close to anything like me out there.