Designing is a lot like a high-wire act - if the tightrope walker is only six inches off the ground, where's the excitement?

Blacks have had to learn to protect themselves by being cynical but not cynical enough to slam the door on potential opportunities. We go through life walking a tightrope to prevent too much disillusionment.

If expectations are low, you can only impress people. But if expectations are there for you to be the leading guy, and you've been paid X amount of money, you're on a tightrope, and all of a sudden, you're looking down.

I like to run and hike. I do some slack-lining, like balancing on the tightrope, which is really good for your entire body, but I've noticed a lot of benefits in my feet and ankles.

I would love to play a villain someday in that I think that what I've done with my whole career is walk this tightrope between charming and creepy, and I always fall on the charming side. I'd like to fall on the creepy side and be like one of those scary old men, like really charming villains.

Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

In this day and time, with no competition you are really walking a tightrope. I mean you may think that no competition is good, but in reality no competition is really bad.

Americans like optimism, and 'Once' walks a tightrope: you feel uplifted at the end even if you're crying.

Being a director or a conductor is a balance of many things. And to do it right is a very difficult tightrope to walk. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no way to be one hundred percent popular as conductor.

Acting is the most insecure profession in the world - you're insecure if you're successful, you're insecure if you're not. A tightrope walk without a net. It's a miracle I'm still standing!

The storytelling in a movie is in the cut; it's in the edit. It's not an actor's job, really. Your job is such a tiny little thing, and I love the feeling of juggling or tightrope walking.

The short story is a very natural mode of storytelling; most stories can be told quickly. I always think of them as like a tightrope walk - every sentence is a step along the rope, and you can so easily misplace your step and break your neck.

Life can be a bore if you're constantly walking sidewalks instead of a tightrope once in a while.

Often, contrasts bring art to life: the bright speck of paint on a dark canvas; the tightrope walk between humor and tragedy.

If I went back to live-action, I'd have to do it the Pixar way. If I didn't, I'd feel like I was walking a tightrope without a net.

Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.

The thing about a cartoon is, you can do whatever you want. The tightrope that we are walking on 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama' is 'How do you continue to surprise the audience, but make them good surprises?' Not every surprise is good, but you want to continue jolting people.

The biggest lesson that I've learned is that fashion is this tightrope where you have to be consistent but inconsistent. You need the connective thread but at the same time you need a sense of surprise.

I have a very eclectic iPod. So I've got my cardio people - so it's anything from Beyonce to some Jay-Z to Janelle Monae, her song 'Tightrope,' that's a good cardio song. And then I've got Sting. I've got Mary J. Blige. I've got The Beatles. I've got Michael Jackson. I try to pick the songs that I personally love.

All nonmimetic fiction is a balancing act between 'reality' and the obviously unreal, with no attempt by the author to make the latter seem like the former. Sometimes it's not an easy tightrope to walk. But when it succeeds, such fiction can brilliantly illuminate the human condition.

Chinese leaders are walking a tightrope in terms of maintaining internal stability so that the solid platform that has produced amazing results can continue to improve the quality of life for more of its citizens.

I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.'

In high drama or high tragedy or anything, it's not really human unless there's some humor at the same time. And vice versa. So I guess I tend to gravitate towards projects which tread a dodgy tightrope between two things, which aren't really one or another.

Being mixed in the South, that's a struggle that everybody deals with differently. Some people go careening to one side or the other, and some people try to walk a tightrope between the two. I grew up spending equal time with both sides of my family.

Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen. The quantum mechanical and the relativity ideas are examples of this.

I get good references from a wide range of music. Something who's been a good influence in the last few years is Qawwali music. If you listen to a Qawwali singer like Aziz Mian - he's like James Brown. Qawwali is like Pakistani gospel-jazz. It's emotional, but it's also improvised, and it's all about that sacred-and-profane tightrope.

Let us look at Jim Crow for the criminal he is and what he has done to one life multiplied millions of times over these United States and the world. He walks us on a tightrope from birth.

I love, love, love live performance. It's like walking a tightrope without the net. You better be on point; you better be balanced. You better have rehearsed it and seen it from every vantage so you can do what you do best. I do love film because it's up front in your face, and hopefully you've got a great editor.

Singing bel canto is like walking on a tightrope - especially with a larger voice like mine.

Most of 'Let the Great World Spin' is centered on the day in 1974 when Philippe Petit walked on a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center, creating an astonishing spectacle that intersects with the lives of many of the novel's multiple protagonists.

For me, looking back is akin to being on a tightrope and looking down. It doesn't help you in the present moment to deal with what you have to deal with in order to move forward.