A.A. Allen Quotes

I don't necessarily like being defined by my profession.

I just felt like I had to create a life for myself where I was more independent.

A lot of times when I've been offered film series and stuff, if they shoot in Los Angeles, I lose interest.

I don't know if I've ever played a character who's close to me. There have been some elements of myself in different roles. Sometimes, I show one side of myself and then completely conceal the other.

I try to offer as much as I can to the director so he has as much to work with as possible to create the character that, really, he wants to create in a sense.

I feel as though I would be delighted to come back into working in the film world, and working in the theater world again. I'm just gonna see what happens.

When I read a film script, I kind of see it in my head and I see the moments that shape what I understand the character to be. There's very little time for rehearsal.

People want to see a movie that casts a mature woman across from a mature man.

If there are no other wonderful roles that come my way, I have a quite an interesting, dynamic life.

I'm from a generation of fantastic actresses. It's a big pool of really wonderful actresses, and so many of them we never even get to see on the screen anymore.

I said to myself, 'I've waited a long time in my life to have a child, and I'm missing it, I want to continue to have a career, but not this way.

There's something so wonderful about being an actor in New York.

There is a difference when you work with actors who have worked on the stage. When we're out there in front of an audience eight times a week, you can't do it on your own.

For me, the motivation really was to work with Al Pacino. To me, that seemed like an incredible opportunity, just a learning opportunity because I thought so highly of him.

I watch many, many, many independent films every year that you see once in a film festival and they're never heard of ever again. Many of them are very, very good.

CGI is to me like watching a cartoon. It can be effective, if it's done well. A lot of times you don't feel any real risk. You're watching a bunch of computer-generated graphics.

Unfortunately, I feel as actors we have to fight for the right to really go in as many directions as possible.

I'm always surprised when people say, "Oh, it got such mixed reviews." I guess I didn't read them.

I've had so many people just come up to me and say, 'When you came up on the screen, everybody in the theater applauded.' It's just so sweet, really.

There's more violence in one football game than there is in an entire hockey season, and nobody ever talks about that.

The secret is to be prepared, to draw on the strengths of the people around you, and most importantly, to instill confidence that your team will step up and find a solution.

At the end of the day it's really easy to be a great leader when things are going well. The real test, whether or not you believe in being an emotionally intelligent leader, is when things go wrong.

As a sensitive and highly intuitive person in the command-and-control corporate world, I always felt miscast.

Mandela stands alone in possessing all of the qualities of other great men, but has one quality which is transcendent... his ability to forgive and to place others above himself.

My grandfather used to say to me when I was a boy, "Getting knocked down is no big prize - it's getting up that's the real trick." I couldn't agree more.

True buoyant leaders can never communicate in percentage points, or charts and figures. First and foremost, they must be storytellers, communicating with their hearts, not heads.

Maintaining patience, being generous, and helping your peers takes time, and no small amount of emotional fortitude. But it brings an exponential difference in your team's ability to problem-solve.

As I was coming up in business, screwing up was not an option in any form.

Survival in the demand economy depends on and requires experimentation, risk taking, and trial and error.

When your people have determined that you understand their lies in their hearts and are dedicated to their functional wellbeing, they will compensate for your weaknesses and shore up your strengths.

The phrases and language used everyday in an organization can in fact affect the way your team makes decisions and conducts themselves.

What can be seeds of destruction can also be seeds of greatness.

Once you reach people on an authentic emotional level, they will reward your faith in them with their belief in you, and they will mobilize to get the job done.

Once you demonstrate to your team that you put them on the same plane of priority as yourself, you will create an environment, and a culture that will make your entire organization flourish.

I believe that the establishment of a real ambition, a powerfully galvanizing and exciting vision of what a group is setting out to create, is vitally important.

First, define your credo- the belief system of the organization. Secondly, define your real ambition, or where do you want to go as a collective community.

You can't mobilize people and connect with them authentically when they can't see the true you.

One of my great mistakes coming up, since I was a kid from wrong side of the tracks, and fearful that I might be seen as wanting leadership-wise, was to be someone I was not.

Journaling is something that I've always tried to get into.

There is plenty of people I'd love to collaborate with, would love to produce with, would love to write songs with.

I'm not a man of many words, I'm not very expressive or emotional, but it comes out in my music.

I am really laid back and kind of go-with-the-flow, but I will never do anything that I don't believe in.

For me, I feel like I relate to a lot of people.

Writing music and playing guitar was really what I wanted to do forever.

I love pop music, but I love pop music that does something a little bit different.

It's hard to write music for specific things, because I'm always writing just to write.

I've always been a procrastinator.

Trying to convey an emotion through words is not easy.

Arkansas is really, really nice. Its got the nature feel.

II know very, very little about the ukulele, but I actually grew up playing the viola from 4th grade through high school.