Reed Hastings Quotes

I was an avid reader as a child because we didn't have television in Ireland until the mid-'60s.

I have liked games for a very long time but when I saw 'Gradius' at the arcade as a junior high student, I became certain that in the future all forms of entertainment will be taken over by video games.

Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.

When you're acting you put so much of yourself into working. As much fun as it is, it's still hard work and it's still a challenge.

When I was little, I would burn ants with a magnifying glass. But now that I'm older, I'm more of a cat guy.

People divide into groups where they talk to each other, but don't talk across the divide. And yet most of the challenges we face in the world today are challenges that are to do with trade, with technology, with how you make sure that people are properly educated, reform your health care system.

If I had a choice, I would do comedy all the time. It's just the most challenging thing. To make someone laugh is the most challenging thing, and the most rewarding thing, in entertainment.

Science and technology were often used by [the magician of old], even before they came into the marketplace on a mass basis. For example, prior to the moving picture going into theatre, magicians were using the technique of images in motion as illusions in their shows. At that time the process was so new, an audience perceived it as magic. Also in the early stages of holograms magicians would use these images to baffle and mystify their fans. Hence, you always need to stay one step ahead of the technology game to "WOW" the audience.

If any art form can accommodate contemporary culture, it's the novel. It's so malleable - it can incorporate essays, poetry, film. Maybe the challenge for the novelist is to stretch his art and his language, to the point where it can finally describe what's happening around him.

Interactivity is a big part of video games, which have been a big part of entertainment for 20 years. That's what we think of as a 'lean-forward' type of entertainment. It's much more intense. But TV is more of a 'lean-back' entertainment - so the big improvement there is on-demand, because it conforms to your schedule.

So much American science fiction is parochial - not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way.

I'm looking for parts that will challenge me comedically. I would love to be on a multicam sitcom one day, kind of like Friends. I love making people laugh and would like to continue to do so!

[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)

My only challenge is to entertain. And I accomplish my task better when I myself am entertained by what I am doing. I am very critical of myself, I constantly set the bar higher and higher. I try to surpass myself. That's all. But I also know how to preserve myself, to not let myself get bedazzled by the smoke and mirrors.

Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.

That was the challenge. How can you tell the story here and make sure it goes the same way on the other side of the world?

It's a lot of work to put a brand-new monologue and a brand-new show on the air and find comedy every single day. It's challenging and it's the hardest thing I have ever done, but it's the best-suited thing for me. The more relaxed I get and the more confident I feel, the more I get to play and be myself...

Most people don't really understand what it takes to get a film made, and the struggles. I think anyone who makes a film goes through their own set of struggles. People go to extraordinary lengths to get films made. I hope it's of interest to people. One would think that it would be very easy, with an iconic character like James Bond, to keep making the films, but it hasn't been. But, it sure has been entertaining and rewarding.

I suspect that even though the various questions are difficult and many, they are not as difficult and many as those we faced when we started the Apollo [space program] in 1961.

Technology changes the medium. I grew up on watching a box in my living room that made my parents happy. After something is gone, the dust will settle and I'll see what's next.

The age of automobiles and aeroplanes cannot express itself in the same manner as did the age of the diligence.

Where the world is going and what technology is leading us to in terms of the evolution of humanity is an incredibly valuable thing to understand.

I'm not scared of doing movies that are just about entertainment. I'm not scared of doing movies that are really challenging and cover difficult terrain. I just want good experiences and I want to challenge myself and I want to just keep learning, as an actor.

The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.

As you get older, there will be a new challenge arising. What you thought you'd accomplished once, maybe the goal post has shifted and it's not what you're pursuing anymore, because you're not interested in that anymore, you know?