My attitude about Hollywood is that I wouldn't walk across the street to pull one of those executives out of the snow if he was bleeding to death. Not unless I was paid for it. None of them ever did me any favors.
There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.
Ever since childhood, I've been interested in history and myth. Not just the facts and figures of the past, but everything that contributes to shape our perception of an age: architecture, art, literature and so forth.
Today more than ever we need creative minds to address the issues of the age. And one of the most urgent is this: How can humanity know so much, achieve so much, and still fail so many people so badly?
I found myself in the doldrums in the early Nineties. I was too old to play the dolly bird any longer and I looked too young to play a woman of my real age. No one ever saw me as the aunt, mother or grandmother.
Sitting around our kitchen table from a very early age on, we talked politics, and we talked policy. Never once can I ever remember my dad saying, 'Go away, this is an adult conversation.'
There is something in age that ever, even in its own despite, must be venerable, must create respect and to have it ill treated, is to me worse, more cruel and wicked than anything on earth.
Science goes from question to question; big questions, and little, tentative answers. The questions as they age grow ever broader, the answers are seen to be more limited.
I watched 'Ghostbusters' from the age of four. It's my favorite movie, still. Bill Murray's, like, the weirdest straight man that you've ever seen. He's convinced that he's the normal one, even though he's definitely not.
Besides, wouldn't it be wonderful if no one ever had to worry about the random cruelty of fatal illness or the woes of old age attacking them or their loved ones?
I knew at an early age I wanted to act. Acting was always easy for me. I don't believe in predestination, but I do believe that once you get where ever it is you are going, that is where you were going to be.
Initially I thought: 'I would never get cast opposite Will Smith! No one would ever buy it with the age difference, our personalities.' I can't think of a couple that makes less sense in every way, shape and form.
In the 1970s, many intellectuals had become political radicals. Marxism was correct, liberalism was for wimps, and Marx had pronounced that 'the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.'
I still pinch meself when I wake up of a morning. Who ever thought I'd be a children's author - let alone a best-selling children's author?
I get over a hundred letters a day from all over the world, from children and parents, and it's a wonder I ever have time to write books, let alone speak!
Ever since Adam's day, the divine law of the Sabbath has been emphasized repeatedly over the centuries more than any other commandment. This long emphasis alone is an indication of its importance.
We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.
No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation.
One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The coolest party I've ever D.J.ed would have to be for the artist Damien Hirst. It was an amazing party in Berlin. I had such a great time, and people danced all night long.
I knew I'd just done one of the most amazing things that I will ever get a chance to do. Just to be part of a musical that's not your background and to pull it off and to think that we've done something that's really special.
