I wasn't accepted the first time I tried to get into drama school. I said, 'I'll give this one more shot... and if that doesn't work, I won't bang my head against this painful brick wall.'
The Rock is the Rock, you know? He's the ultimate athlete, the professional man with precision. And you want precision from a 270-pound living, walking brick wall.
Sometimes you'd come up against a brick wall... or sometimes you go into a fill and you'd know halfway through it was going to be disastrous.
The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose. Life is a learning process and you have to try to learn what's best for you. Let me tell you, life is not fun when you're banging your head against a brick wall all the time.
There's this classic car crash thing about 'Macbeth.' You can just see this car driving at 100 mph towards this brick wall, and you can't do anything about it, and the characters are desperately trying to stop it and can't.
I hit a brick wall one day, and I spent a lot of time by myself learning about me and who I am and what I want and don't want.
Writing a novel isn't like building a brick wall. You don't figure out how to do it, and then it gets easier each time because you know what you're doing. With writing a novel, you have to figure it out each time. Each time you start over, you just have the language and the idea and the hope.
I remember walking onstage in the first performance, and something hit me like a brick wall, and I just knew at that moment that this is something I had to do for the rest of my life, and I've never looked back.
Writing a film is like building a brick wall. You have a plan, and you have the blocks. Then, somebody says, 'I think we'll take this stone out of here and put it over there. And while we're at it, let's make this stone red and that stone green.'
I think my best songs come from me sitting at a piano, bashing my head against a brick wall for hours and hours on end to get one good melody.
