A.Z. Black Quotes
Kids love to be silly, they love to laugh, so I think it was natural for my kids to like the sort of books that I write - and it's the only kinds of books I'm capable of writing.
Part of what's exciting to me about my career is the constant looking forward. Whenever I finish one project, I am looking to what's next.
I used to need the character but as I've gotten older I need it less and less - I prefer to play some version of myself. To approach any acting job as me just being me.
I'm very introverted, so it requires a huge effort for me to put on a smile and extend a hand and accept compliments. I would much rather be insulted than complimented any day.
My fear is if I expose myself, not so much that I'll be hurt, but that the reaction will be "Is that all there is? Is that the entirety of you? Because it's boring."
I was very surprised how many people were earnestly reminiscing about the '80s. It's such a stupid thing to do, like, to be honestly invested in nostalgia. It never even occurred to me to do that.
The characters that I have on Twitter have very little resemblance to me, the person who's writing them.
It's such a deliberate thing to sit down and write a tweet. You're putting yourself out there in a very deliberate way, and over however many tweets, you start to create a character for yourself.
Twitter is about creating whatever persona you want to create and either sticking with it or changing it or evolving it or contradicting it, and I've done all that stuff.
With stand-up, you can be as freeform as you want to be. You can say what you want, how you want, at any moment without constraint.
Hosting a show, even a talk show or a game show, there's so much business you have to conduct. There's so much guiding you have to do.
I'll never admit that I'm an actor, because the next horrible follow-up question is always, "Oh, what have I seen you in?"
It doesn't matter what you're chasing, when you get there you're gonna be like, "Oh, is this all? It kind of sucks."
If you say "I'm going to be an actor, but I'll get a teaching degree just in case," when things get hard, you'll just be a teacher and that's how you get stuck.
All my friends were girls. Then my mom's strident feminism for years where men were thought of as the enemy, I just didn't know what the right way to be a man was.
I never really understood what was expected of me as a man, or how I was supposed to interact with women, but worse, with other guys. I did not relate to them.
The things I care about are the most pedestrian things in the world. I care about good ice cream and being a good dad and a decent husband.
Things you never thought were going to turn into something end up being the most important things in your life. You have to learn to not try to control it.
As an actor, you can show up on a set and be on a TV show for three or four years, or whatever it is and, by the end of it, you just want to do something else.
I was one of those little girls who practiced signing autographs since I was 5 years old.
I don't really use YouTube that much. I am a very Internet-oriented person, but I'm more of a Twitter freak - I'm always on Twitter. Or chatting with friends.
80% of the mistakes you will make in information architecture can be caught if you bring in a great usability expert from the beginning.
Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind.
I wrote all the time, but the idea of doing it professionally seemed like pie in the sky. Who gets paid to write? I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it wasn't really a notion that a lot of people pursue.
I wanted at one point to act, which is a weird thing for men to want to do. It's a very vain profession.
I think the most important thing is to, without belligerence, stand up for what want. Argue compellingly if someone tries to change your script.
When you only have $15 million, you have to talk about something interesting. You can't just cut to a helicopter exploding.
I think it's an obligation to make a movie full, so you have to see it twice to get all the moments.
For years I was doing the excruciating weightlifting of writing scripts - but then I stayed thin and someone else got all the muscles.
I don't mind women who want to act. That's fine. It's odd that men want to act, in that there's still a degree of vanity associated with it.
Any time anyone fires bullets in an action movie that don't hit the target it immediately undermines the movie.
I owe a great deal of thanks to this man who will be gracious enough to say I've helped him with his career and comeback, but it's every bit the opposite.
Americans of all ages are earning less than they did two decades ago when adjusted for inflation. Yet they’re paying more in taxes.
