Peo Quotes

(On being seen as a `nice` celebrity) I don`t hold myself to some higher standard of behavior. You don`t have to do a lot to be seen as nice. I guess some of these people must be such rampant pricks that people are amazed when you say hello. I don`t know why people like me, and I don`t know if I want to know. That might be the kiss of death. I`d rather people not know a lot about me and go see the movies.

(about his church`s influence on his finally getting clean and sober) When I listened to this guy on the radio, he seemed to understand what was going on with me. So Maylo and I checked this guy out at his church. We sat in the back and had a terrific time. People were warm and friendly. They didn`t seem to mind that I was dressed in leather and that my girlfriend had purple hair. It didn`t matter to them what we looked like or who we were. It only mattered that we were there.

For so long afterward (9/11), whenever I heard anyone talk about Muslims, it was in association with terrorism. But I thought, what could I do in a teeny way - and believe me, it`s a teeny way - to defuse this? There had to be some way to separate the 1.5 billion people who don`t want to kill us from the 100,000 or so who do. I thought if I could get five Muslims and six Hindus and maybe 3 Jews to laugh for 90 minutes, then I`ve accomplished something. (on Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World)

In everything that I do I learn and try to put it to use. I have learned to go through life not into it. It`s like a boat. You mustn`t let the water in or you`re sunk. Of course, I`ve made mistakes and I have had failures, but I do not dwell on them because people don`t care about garbage. When I make a mistake it`s like a bad leaf on a lettuce - I throw it out into the waste basket.

It`s challenging in the way that it`s a lot of work, I`m very busy. It`s challenging in a way that it`s a sequel and I feel I got big shoes to fill. I wasn`t at all affiliated with the first one and it was very successful and I`m just kind of afraid that people will get to the theatre and say: "Who`s this girl? She wasn`t in the first one!" So that pressure is there and in that sense...it has been difficult. (On her role in Final Destination)

Going there is paying your dues. You always have to pay your dues. . . . You`ve just got to do it. Maybe I come from a working family. Maybe it`s the voice of my mom saying, `You`ve always got to be nice to people.` I look at it as saying it`s going to be fun. Those people are going to be really, really happy.

I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn`t really going out and seeing people.

I think that music videos began to be approached by young filmmakers as a form where they could do something interesting and innovative around the late `80s. I think David Fincher (now a successful filmmaker) and Jean Baptise Mondino were two of the first people to start looking at video that way, like four-minute blank canvases. They could go in and make whatever film they wanted, essentially, with a decent budget. So it became like film school for some really talented guys. Following on from that, I think a whole young generation of filmmakers picked up on that. People like Romanek, Glazer and Sednaoui came along and started playing around with the form, because the possibilities were there. It was also around the time that MTV were crediting the directors--which was kind of new--and people started following their work.

They basically said, `If you get pushed over that sucks and you might get pepper sprayed,` ... We couldn`t move because we were up against the rail and they showed no concern -- the railing really does hurt when you are being pushed up against it by thousands of people.

It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator`s skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.

The bigger story is the new voters who may come in. Last time we had 105 million people vote. Some say we will have 115, maybe 120 million people vote. Registration has shot up in a number of states - 5 percent in Ohio, 7 percent in Pennsylvania. A lot of new people will be at the polls.