Hanging out is a waste of time. The only time I would hang out was when I was a kid, I would hang out in the streets. But once I started making records, I stopped hanging out.
Suddenly, one day, there was this thing called parenting. Parenting was serious. Parenting was fierce. Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying.
Many people think that discipline is the essence of parenting. But that isn't parenting. Parenting is not telling your child what to do when he or she misbehaves. Parenting is providing the conditions in which a child can realize his or her full human potential.
Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting.
People stopped hanging out with me at the point when I stopped doing drugs. All of a sudden they didn't wanna hang out with me anymore. And I would have hung out with them. I mean they were killing themselves, but I still would have hung out with them.
Parenting is not giving your child everything they want. Parenting is not being your child's friend. Parenting is about preparing your child to be a useful and respectful person in society.
I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.
If it really was a no-brainer to make it on your own in business there'd be millions of no-brained, harebrained, and otherwise dubiously brained individuals quitting their day jobs and hanging out their own shingles. Nobody would be left to round out the workforce and execute the business plan.
If only media people would stop reaching for the low-hanging fruit, which is cynicism and pessimism, and stopped trying so hard to be hip and cool and have a swagger.
To be a good mom, you have to step away from it for a minute. Whether that's getting out of the mom outfit or hanging out with your girlfriends - and not just your mom group friends - hanging out with other women.
Even when I was a kid, I had a good thing with kids. To this day, if I go to a birthday party with one of my kids, I swear to you, I am so much happier hanging out with my kids and their friends than talking to the grown-ups.
The first idea of Captain Fantastic was a pretty radically different one. The genesis had to do with parenting and questions about parenthood and fatherhood specifically. I have two kids and I was grappling with what my values were and what I wanted to pass to my children. So I was positing different kinds of parents and different ways of parenting. I played with various ideas - very permissive parenting, very restrictive parenting and then I came up with the character of Viggo Mortensen, and much of it was aspirational, some of it was autobiographical.
I stopped going out and taking pills and I started hanging out and learning about flat eleven chords.
Acting is a cruel enough business. One minute everyone's going 'Hey!' and the next they're going 'Who?'. You certainly don't need people knowing your private business, especially if you want to come out with your head still attached.
You would give up your career if you lost your voice for good, or if the impresarios stopped calling, or the audiences stopped coming. But as long as those things are there, I don't plan to stop. There is nothing that makes me feel better than to be with my public.
When you're at a public pool or in your friend's backyard, knowing that your kids can get in and out of the water and protect themselves can make all the difference in the world. Something as simple as being able to flip over and get to the ladder can save a life. You can start your kids in lessons as early as you want - it's never too soon.