Quotes About Exploration

As a songwriter, I listen to everything to be inspired... from Rihanna to Bruno Mars to Springsteen to Johnny Cash.

The Seven Cities of Gold always fascinated me. Southwestern U.S. history especially fascinates me. The whole spur of the Spanish exploration of the Southwestern U.S. was the search for these mythical Seven Cities of Gold.

My well-known aesthetic sense, which is so obvious and personal, spontaneously spurs me to challenge myself with different disciplines.

I used to think, 'I'm going to write.' I knew that from quite early on, but I also thought, 'Maybe I'll be an explorer or a spy,' and it all came from books.

What I want is for people to really grab hold of language and not be nervous about it. 'The Word Spy' is all about diving in and playing with words.

For me, there's something very romantic about going and looking at the stars and trying to photograph spy satellites.

I used to try to pick locks because I grew up on my grandparents' farm and I started my own little spy club. I would go around the farm and try to break into the shed and try spying on my grandpa. It was ridiculous.

But it is impossible to divide a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into fourth powers, or generally any power beyond the square into like powers; of this I have found a remarkable demonstration. This margin is too narrow to contain it.

Specifically choose not to take a GPS. Just create a challenge. You can climb Everest or walk across Antarctica with minimal gear and still have that sense of adventure. But in terms of exploration, Google Earth has this world mapped down to the square foot.

With Fincher, you can take chances and try things. And what happens is that any pretension and preparation you've done, all the square, intellectual work, you can't keep that up for 40 takes. It breaks down, and new things start popping up. This, for me, is the most exciting thing about film-making.

I love knowing that if I was dropped off in Trafalgar Square, I could walk in any direction and see something amazing or eat something delicious.

I'm not squeamish at all. As a child I dragged a dead squirrel home on my skateboard and cut it open and tried to look at its brain.

I like squirrels. They're so adventurous.

What we expect to find, certainly in our own solar system, are probably simple single or multiple-cell forms of life. To get to intelligent life takes stability of conditions over huge, long periods of time.

Some people hit a profession and just keep going deeper into it, making a life and making it more and more stable. That's not been my experience. I always want to try something new.

You have to decide if you want something stable and safe or if you want to take a risk and go outside the formula and try something new. That's everything that dance embodies.

The first time I ever heard the blues, my parents had a stack of records that they weren't using anymore. I found them when I was ten; I didn't know what it was. But I found Lightnin' Hopkins.

In Germany I already know everything, I know every stadium.

I wanted to try everything. I learnt a lot from playback singing. But at heart, I'm a pop rock singer; I'm a stage performer.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

No matter how many times you've done it, the early stages of getting a show up on its feet is very hit and miss. There seem to be thousands of options on every page to discover.

I mean, there is amazing amount of oil and gas and other resources out beneath the sea. It's staggering.

If I can, I would like to do as many different roles in a year because then there is no stagnation. That used to happen when I played one role in a serial for years. When a show goes on for years and is delivering ratings, you didn't get the chance to take up other roles and shows.

It's not an easy place to be - to write a horror film. You go down the stairs to the dark to find these characters. It's not a place anyone can go, and sometimes it's not a place that you want to go.