Quotes About Complexity

It's tricky to take a book of short stories and turn it into a feature film.

Part of what's so tricky in a film that's two hours long is how many themes can you effectively explore.

Autobiographical fiction is very tricky.

I think human beings are funny, tricky things.

Pilots are tricky because there are so many things you have to accomplish.

Sequels are always tricky.

I always have sort of been someone who has contradictory parts, and I haven't tried to uncomplicate myself. I've sort of let things seem contradictory, and sometimes it really confuses people. I don't know if it's working all the time, but I'd rather do that than try to sell myself as one thing or another.

The brain is the most complex, challenging scientific puzzle we have ever tried to decode.

I played the ingenue, of course, when I was young - but even with those, I tried to make interesting choices and mess them up a little bit - make them layered and complicated and not all stereotypes.

Everything I do tries to do the same thing, which is to express things that are hard to express, hidden things.

Genes are not simple triggers. No one is hardwired to commit murder or any other crime. Our actions are always the result of stupendously complex gene-environment interactions, and environment is likely to remain the more important influence by far.

The actual organization of behavior goes on the level of the individual nerve cells and their connections, and we have a hundred billion nerve cells, probably a hundred trillion connections. It's just mind-boggling to think of all the different ways in which they're arranged in a baby's head.

I don't despise 'Don Quixote,' but it is a book I don't... get. I'll have to come back it. Maybe there'll be a gateway story that opens it up for me; that happened for me with 'Paradise Lost' and the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy.

Longest book was '2666' by Roberto Bolano, and it was an irregular reading experience. I read the first four parts during a cross-country plane trip, reading at slightly slower-than-usual speed but surprised at how accessible the book was compared with 'The Savage Detectives.'

It's certainly possible to write fiction that isn't trivial and isn't what people would call political, but it is very hard to figure out how, because our ordinary lives have such a strong tincture now of the whole world.

To demonstrate this simultaneity is by no means trivial, because it may for example happen that the product nucleus always forms in an activated state at first.

The way out of trouble is never as simple as the way in.

The trouble with climate change is it's an extraordinarily diverse and complex issue, but for example if the BBC would let me make some of the programmes I'd like to make on climate change, I bet you there would be a change of emphasis.

Girls seem to get me in trouble a lot of times.

I'm not actually as emotional as everybody thinks. The songs are super personal, but that's just one side of me, and I guess people just assume I'm some troubled guy who's constantly sad.

Every time I'd get a job, they'd say: 'You'll be good at loading trucks.' I couldn't explain that there was more to me than carrying things.

Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true.

With any project I work on - not just 'True Detective' - I don't feel the need just to play a strong woman. I don't want the audience to say, 'Oh, she was so strong.' I want to play characters that are flawed and interesting.