External Direction Quotes

Whenever I've done jobs, whether it's an acting job or writing job, there's an aspect of it that feels like you help build your piece of it, and then you watch as someone takes it, and they finish building it.

If there is an authoritarian structure at St. Hill it has been brought into being by the government itself. St. Hill is trying to correct itself. It doesn't know what it's trying to correct because nobody has told it what to correct.

Everything happened relatively quickly in our rise to the top. But we were like robots. We were told what to do and we just did it. We didn't have time to look inside ourselves. It was all just a constant whirlwind.

A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance or connections they do not perceive. The result will be a confusion in which a few will appropriate to themselves the results of the blind and externally directed activities of others.

I recall the first time my agent told me to wear clothes specifically chosen for me, I would try and find excuses not to do it.

Because they feel that without them telling you to do this, you wouldn't have had the characters that you have, you wouldn't have the book that you have.

It is so cool having complete control over something because, with acting, it's words written by other people that you perform; you do something that's completely not yourself.

If the Tao could be served up, everyone would serve it up to their lords. If the Tao could be offered, there is no one who would not offer it to their parents. If the Tao could be spoken of, there is no one in the world who would not speak of it to their brothers and sisters. if the Tao could be passed on, there is no one who would not pass it on to their heirs. However, it obviously cannot be so and the reason is as follows. If there is no true centre within to receive it, it cannot remain;if there is no true direction outside to guide it,it cannot be received.

Whatever my agent says to do, I usually do.

At the Paris Opera Ballet, they were always making choices for me.

Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way.

As an actor, you're always at the service of somebody else's vision. In a play, it's more of the director's vision, and he or she's got their hands on you all the way up to opening night, and if it's a film, there are even more people.

The only thing that isn't free is you. You do as you're told. You sit in your seat until they say 'Stand'. You stay put til they say 'Go'. Maybe that's the way you like it. It's easy. It's all there. You don't have to think about. You don't even have to feel it.

If you just want ten songs to fit somebody else's script, then I'm not really the composer for that.

Unlike a goldfish, a computer can't really do anything without you telling it exactly what you want it to do.

At first it was my brother's songwriting and I was just doing what everyone told me.

Generally you don't initiate the projects - they're designed and you're inserted. Your material is edited by somebody. You feel a lack of power over your work.

There's this weird thing about acting where you have to wait for somebody to ask you to do it; like you have to wait for a director to say it's okay.

What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer?

When you're doing a film, people are always telling you exactly what to do. Literally, your own decisions are taken away from you.

But political checks will no more act of themselves, than a bridle will direct a horse without a rider.

I just respond to the stories I'm being asked to tell.

Just acting on someone else's set feels like a holiday, almost.

So often, when you're an actor, you're told what to do and what to say and what to wear. Your opinion is, at best, tolerated and, at worst, not wanted.

I love it when other people can come up with ideas and tell me what to do.