Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Hollywood is so fixated on keeping it that way because it's generating the buzz, but that representation isn't right. I definitely feel like it's getting better - it's not only for blacks, but for people that are of all different skin colors. It is very important that black independent films get seen. We need to start getting used to black people. They exist. And they've been around for a long time. It's amazing that people still feel, "Oh my gosh, it's a black guy."
Chefs hate desserts. The smartest thing a chef can do is hire a great pastry chef. Cooking savory food is all about feel - you season something, you taste it, you go back in and adjust, more butter, more olive oil, more acid, whatever you want to get it to taste the way you want. Pastries are like a science project. To me, the greatest chefs are the ones who have the greatest feel for food, while the greatest pastry chefs have to be people that are extremely precise.
It's one of the bases of all human existence - the relation between parents and children, whether biologically or metaphorically. It's something we can never get away from, even in a civilization where we're controlled by robots. It's the basic relationship between mature people who represent paternal and maternal figures and young people. It's universal - it's part of human existence. It's always been that way, and it will always be that way if humans remain around.
People who have come of age from the '80s on have experienced a form of activism that's very sterile and annoying. It's not that much fun to be an activist. That's partly by design. They are sterile protests and anonymous e-mail activism - not the kind of thing where people fall in love, form friendships for life, and see the change they make right in front of them. I've seen that, when people start to experience doing these things together and the power that it has.
Many people who call themselves deflationists are deflationists about propositional truth but not about sentential truth. I only ever mention that view to distinguish it from disquotationalism. I don't really have any objection to it, other than that I don't believe in propositions, so I don't think there's any such thing as a proposition's being true. Truth, on my view, is primarily a property of representations, such as sentences and certain kinds of mental states.
COMMITMENT is the first step to every good thing I know, and the only step that matters when it comes to achievement. It inspires and attracts people, shows them you have conviction and goals, that you are focused and determined. And the commitment that is based on values will endure. Any time you make choices based on solid life values, you are in a better position to sustain your level of commitment, because you don't have to continually re-evaluate its importance.
We're missing a lot of the real-life stories of what people's work looks like. Those are the people that I want sitting on the zoning board meetings, on the zoning commissions. Those are the people I want participating in business improvement in their own industry. The gentrification processes that often happen in cities so often manifest in street sweeps of sex workers. How do you get sex workers on neighborhood associations, regarded as members of the neighborhood?
If you look at the ecosystem, entrepreneurs as a class have gotten younger, younger, and younger. They also as a class have become less and less and less experienced. The good part about that is that you're unlocking this ability to start a company to so many more people. That's an amazing positive. The negative is they're coming to that job with dramatically less experience than they've ever had. So there needs to be someone around the table that can then help them.
It's not the norm when creators have any protections with regards to creative control. And so it took some time, I think, for the strip to gain enough popularity where I had enough leverage to come in and say, "It has to be done in a certain way or it's not going to be done at all," and then have people willing to put up with that who were ultimately paying for it. You know, for them to be willing to kind of concede those kind of things. It just takes time, you know?
Most folks, when they see movies or hear records, need something that they find pulls them in, draws them in, and appeals to them beyond just the notes. For a record to be memorable and great, it has to have something of this quality. Exactly what that is, I don't know, but I think it has something to do with an atmosphere, an environment that is appealing and attractive. And the people that inhabit this environment have... almost a message for the rest of the world.
We have to have a shared prosperity. We have to make that our job number one. People want a better economic playing field for working Americans. And they're voting for it. Our job is to make sure that people know that the Democratic party is the party that is going to deliver that for them. And that means strengthening the grassroots. That means strengthening the local precinct county level and making sure that we're all channeled on massive turnout for that program.
The one thread that was most surprising and most consistent was the lack of fear that people felt at the worst moment. They felt a lot of fear in early stages, when they're just realizing what's happening. But then things really seemed to be at their peak of terror, the fear went away. You can imagine why that's useful. At that moment your brain needs to focus all its attention on surviving, so people will feel a sense of calm as their brain tries to sort out a plan.
The clashes of people and the clashes of cultures have assisted me in learning the openness you have to be a part of in New York. You're always meeting people who are different than you. You always have to find a way to exist in it and also find a way to be yourself. In Stockholm, I thought I was artsy, then I came to New York and was like, "there's a bunch of artsy people everywhere!" It really forced me to start looking myself and ask. "what does it mean to be me?"
The reason why nothing sticks to Trump - or very little sticks to Trump - is that Trump created his brand idea that has to do with being the guy who gets away from it. It's this ultimate power through wealth and this dream that represents in an age of tremendous economic precariousness and constrained options for so many people - that watching Trump be able to do whatever he wants to whoever he wants is this obvious vicarious kind of thrill for a certain demographic.
A lot of people in this country are obese because of a form of malnutrition. One thing I'd like to do is to help people understand the correlation between a steady diet of empty calories - though you may not experience hunger pangs, you can't really function well if all you're eating are things like ramen noodles, or chips, cookies, and sodas, things that are quite typically inexpensive and affordable because of the way we subsidize the ingredients that go into them.
Film theory has nothing to do with film. Students presumably hope to find out something about film, and all they will find out is an occult and arcane language designed only for the purpose of excluding those who have not mastered it and giving academic rewards to those who have. No one with any literacy, taste or intelligence would want to teach these courses, so the bona fide definition of people teaching them are people who are incapable of teaching anything else.
Leonardo is the most incredible actor, on the planet, with a couple of people alongside him. Getting to act with him is just [amazing]. I walked away from my audition for that and I couldn't believe that I'd been acting with him. I've worked with amazing people, but my friends freak out that I'm working with him. I freak out in a geeky acting way. They freak out in a starstruck way. He's Leonardo DiCaprio, and his fame is so big. That's a complete tangent about that.
I’m telling you right now I could make him pop an aneurysm and no one would know. (Nero) Doesn’t that kind of murder bother you at all? (Alix) Given everything people have done to me in my life, little girl, especially in my childhood when I was helpless against them, humanity is lucky I’m not on a perpetual killing spree. As for the Merjacks…I owe them a debt that no amount of violence on my part will settle. So, no. Nothing about killing him would bother me. (Nero)
I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
What we need to do is to have a sensible approach to immigration. It needs to be open. It needs to be non-dogmatic and non-bigoted. We need to be firm but reasonable in the way we deal with the problem of illegal immigration. And we need to try to get as many of our immigrants who want to do so to become citizens as quickly as possible so that the American people will all see that this is a part of the process of American history, which is a good one for our country.
We need saints; we need this head - this talking head - to communicate. Every single religion you have people that go in-between, that can talk to god or communicate ideas. Then there are the talking heads in the news every time we watch TV. No matter how complex, you still need a person there to tell you what happened: a storyteller of sorts. I find that fascinating that we feel so attached to this primitive mode of connection, this primitive interface to the world.
[Some of the people I'd met] were wonderful people as human beings, and some people were more difficult. I could not see a correlation between their particular genius in playing chess and music and mathematics, etc. ... with human qualities. Some were really good, wonderful people, and some were difficult characters, but there was no clear correlation. But when I met some spiritual masters, [I thought that] there had to be a correlation, and it turned out to be true.
I may not get the opportunity to make movies for my whole life, but I'm going to make movies for the rest of my life. Maybe studios won't pay for it, but I'm going to do it because I love it. So, I just have to be proud of what I make, and what I'm trying to say in what I make. If people don't like it or people don't see it, that's beyond what I can control. I'm a storyteller, and people are going to listen or not and like it or not. That's only solidified over time.
I don't know anything about chemistry, but I know that there's a whole world of chemistry, of professional chemists. They have their prizes, they have their publications, they have their work. Just because I don't know about it, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. A lot of people say, "Isn't poetry in trouble today?" Or: "Nobody really reads poetry anymore." And I say, "You're crazy." There's a huge world of poetry out there. You may not know about it, but it's there.
During my performances, I don't like folks to take pictures because I feel that we live in a very photographic time. Photography was invented over 100 years ago, and now it's at its peak because everyone has a camera. The fact that they are taking experiences and filtering them through a mechanical lens I find amazing, but also disheartening. Amazing when you have photographs that start revolutions. Disheartening when you have people making photographs but not living.
The American system demands success, and in order to succeed we must first believe that we can. Yet our society, with its intolerance of failure and poverty, traps millions of people in positions where any kind of success seems impossible to contemplate, and in which failure itself is a kind of passive rebellion against their own misery and the social system which created it in the first place. To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.
The problem or the fundamental flaw of Obamacare was that they put regulations on the insurance, about 12 regulations, which increased the cost of the insurance. And so President Obama wanted to help poor, working-class people, but he actually hurts them by making the insurance too expensive to want to buy. I had someone at the house just recently was doing some work, and he said: "Oh, my son doesn't have insurance, he's paying the penalty because it's too expensive."
It doesn't necessarily matter if I'm onstage or not. I just find the communal experience of a rock concert, or any type of music performance, achieves a kind of transcendence that I associate with spirituality. It's the closest thing to what I think people expect church to be like. Or maybe just what I've always thought church should be. You lose yourself, and at the same time come to the realization or understanding that you're part of something bigger than yourself.
He who has talent in him must be purer in soul than anyone else. Another will be forgiven much, but to him it will not be forgiven. A man who leaves the house in bright, festive clothes needs only one drop of mud splashed from under a wheel, and people all surround him, point their fingers at him, and talk about his slovenliness, while the same people ignore many spots on other passers-by who are wearing everyday clothes. For on everyday clothes the spots do not show.
I think living in Baltimore and being a part of the community and trying to be part of as many communities as possible within the city, the best thing that anyone can do in Baltimore is just to be a part of it and contribute to it and to not see it as...A lot of people from outside the city see this city for its blight and I feel like people who live within the city do the opposite and see this city for what defines it as, in my mind, the most beautiful place to live.
The people at the label were great but at the end of the day our visions didn't match up and I knew I had to do it my way. The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made. It was a hard decision to make, but I've never regretted it for a second and it's only become more clear to me after making and releasing Stairwells that it was the right one.
Groupings of people that get together, think things through, come out to plan and so on, like unions or true political organizations, they've disintegrated. And people tend to be atomized - you get down to a society based on social units based on an atom - an atomic element - which is a person and their computer. Not a society that is going to be able to function freely and democratically. The tendency is there; it doesn't have to be, but its something to worry about.
I was 25 years old and pursuing my doctorate in economics when I was allowed to spend six months of postgraduate studies in Naples, Italy. I read the Western economic textbooks and also the more general work of people like Hayek. By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market. In 1968, I was glad at the political liberalism of the Dubcek Prague Spring, but I was very critical of the Third Way they pursued in economics.
The main trend with the theme episodes is that anywhere there is a misconception about the way the physical world works, we're finding fertile material. Whether it's in a phrase like "going over like a lead balloon" or "a needle in a haystack," or tackling movie myths or even a genre, like MacGyver or James Bond, we're finding that all these things can lead to people believing the world works in a certain way. It might not be correct, but we can test out if it's true.
I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business.
I can't remember who it was - maybe Brian Eno - but some important musician guy said he recorded ambient noise from a city street and after he listened to these field recordings for the millionth time, it was like, "Oh yeah, at 1:23, that's where the car horn comes in." So when you're doing stuff like this, and you've been working on it for a year, you're like, "Oh yeah man, that makes perfect sense!" And then you forget when you give it to people, they're bewildered.
The best solution would be better strategies for more rapid economic growth and getting people jobs and increases in income. You should simply be clear about matching problems and solutions. If the problem is someone can't find a job because they don't have the skills and they need some retraining, extending emergency unemployment isn't going to solve that. You need the job training programs or the skills bills that come out of the House and are sitting in the Senate.
I'm not interested in details that might get someone into trouble. I'm more interested in generalities rather than the particulars, as a journalist would be. Names, dates and times don't interest me at all. I'm interested in feelings and emotions. Most people are game, once they realize that you're on the level as far as that's concerned and you're not about exposing them, then they feel quite free to talk about it. Police officers and social workers are no exception.
I now have faith in those who say they represent a faith. Whereas before I was like, 'Do not give me a lecture on how to live my life when I know I'm a pretty decent human being. I might not go to church every day, but I know I do the right thing or try to. You're going to church and you're still sleeping around on your wife and spending everyone's money. How are you better than I am?' So I've finally met people that walk the walk and it's made me happy, really happy.
I believe that we will see a lot of destruction, but I believe that if we can see the right patterns and draw the right lessons from that destruction, we might be able to rebuild before it's too late. And then I have that ultimate optimism that even if we can't, life will rebuild itself. In a way, the global economy might collapse, but Gaia won't, and people's ingenuity won't. We will rebuild society, we will rebuild local economies, we will rebuild human aspirations.
I find that as a female boss in the music industry, it's difficult to actually be treated as if you actually are the boss and to have people act on your instructions and take you seriously. Like you call up people who are working for you and say, "I'd like to see such-and-such document," and they tell you that you don't need it. Then you have to spend time convincing them that it doesn't matter whether they think you need it or not, they're supposed to hand it to you.
Fixating on the outcome or needing to know all the details of an upcoming event, such as a trip, causes people to be upset when things don’t go their way, overly focused on the future, and unable to bounce back easily. Inflexible people are susceptible to anger, distress, and depression. Surrendered people go with the flow, shrug it off when an unplanned situation happens, and tend to be happier, more lighthearted, and resilient. They remember to exhale during stress.
When you finish some film and you let it out there, it is completely out of your control. You've done what you've done, you haven't done what you haven't done, and now you are up for judgment. People can be all kinds of ruthless and they can be all kinds of wonderful. The joy in what I do is in the doing of it. And then there is the part where people are either going to see what I've offered and liked it or they are going to see what I've offered and wish they hadn't.
We have to remember, lefts are the people who created unsustainable national debt, unsustainable health insurance, health care, unsustainable college tuition and debt, unsustainable social welfare programs. Everything the left creates is unsustainable, it can't go on. Everything they create will eventually implode because it can't work as they designed it. Nothing they do is sustainable. That's the great irony. But they claim to know how to sustain life as we know it.
And one of the things that I'm most concerned about is the confidence, the confidentiality of those kind of meetings between President and Russian Foreign Minister, as you know, are extremely important. And so, I am really concerned about kind of leaks, because it undermines everybody's trust in that kind of an environment where you can have frank, candid, and often times unconventional conversations to try to protect American interests and secure the American people.
In fact, most of the time, people with similar information, similar beliefs and similar apparent choices will choose similar actions. So if you want to know why someone does what they do, start with what they know, what they believe and where they came from. Dismissing actions we don't admire merely because we don't care enough to have empathy is rarely going to help us make the change we seek. It doesn't help us understand, and it creates a gulf that drives us apart.
Evan Rachel Wood is a robot, yes. And some of them, there was one person in particular that was so sure, wrote like a whole thesis, and tagged the whole cast. He was like, "Here's my theory. And remember I said it first." He was so proud. And it could not have been farther from what we're actually doing, but it was cute. I love that people are getting so passionate about it because I went through a million different theories, and they would keep changing and evolving.
Most people consume information passively-whatever they're being fed. They're being fed Russian television, which tells them that in the 90s there was a terrible catastrophe, that before that life had been all right, and then when Putin came many people say, "I've never lived as well as I'm living under Putin." That's true-there has never been such a level of affluence. But now, it looks like people will have to tighten their belts, and some are already having doubts.
The great thing about 2017 is that, because of the terrible political state that we're in and that America is in, young people are so vocal at the moment about so many issues, from racism to LGBT rights to beyond. I feel like - especially when I look at my fan-base - people are so vocal about their opinions and so vocal about spreading love. That's really important, and I think it's really amazing that people are talking about that. I just want that to keep happening.
Huge events in life inform you in so many ways that you know about and many other ways that you cannot even comprehend. To go through a big experience can have such a profound impact on everything that you do. It's the common thing that everyone says about a tragedy - it is a really tough thing to happen but it is amazing, and a gift, if you can look at the positive aspects that come out and the friendships that are made from the people that provided help and support.