I hate that my life is teaching me that I can only be loved if I put my love out of reach and just drift above people until they love my remoteness.
Kleiber was the perfect dancer - so perfect that you could see the process. After all, dance is a process; it's a series of snapshots. Kleiber knew how to connect people to the flow, so he could stop managing people.
I see people as haunted by the selves they don't know... I don't have children, but I have nieces and nephews, and one thing I notice is how fascinated they are by stories of their lives before they can remember.
Mistakes can be like ice. If we resist them, we may keep on slipping into a posture of defeat. If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.
I try to answer all my fan mail. Sometimes I get questions from people who obviously only read the Wiki but haven't read the books. I'm like, 'But you have to read the book or you're not going to get it.'
People still call me the eternal amateur. After all, professionals are supposed to be able to conduct everything. But I can't unless I feel some connection inside. Conducting is not an end in itself for me.
Sometimes I watch the broad comedies coming out of Hollywood and I think, 'You know, sex is a big part of people's lives, but is that really the only thing men are ever concerned about?' People are more complicated than they appear in film or televis...
The way that people feel changes everything. Feelings are forces. They cause us to time travel. And to leave ourselves, to leave our bodies. I would be that kind of psychologist who says, 'You're absolutely right - there are monsters under the bed.'
I can always track my career by the children - I started writing right after the 14-year-old was born, and sold my first book just in time to pay for the birth of the 12-year-old.
His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign ...
I spend a lot of my time on the phone, pestering people. 'What's new in your lab? Can I come visit your lab? When can I come visit your lab?' I'm basically a professional pesterer.
One of the maddening ironies of writing books is that it leaves so little time for reading others'. My bedside is piled with books, but it's duty reading: books for book research, books for review. The ones I pine for are off on a shelf downstairs.
During one new moon at perigee, I stood on high ground, watching salt ponds overflow, cover the beach, and meet the ocean. Because the moon was invisible, the water was black as it drowned the sand, and the event felt primal - which in fact it was, b...
I think if there was no violence in our world, there would be no violence in film. Violence is a part of human nature, and obviously it's a troublesome part of human nature. You always have responsibilities when you portray violence in what angle you...
When you think about rock at its origin, and you think of the Beatles and millions of kids screaming as loud as they can and running as fast as they can towards the Beatles, there's no one who is that kind of lightning rod, who commands that kind of ...
According to Jewish legend, only the very wisest and very holiest rabbis had the power to make golems, animated servants of clay. Strictly speaking, the golem is not in the same class with Frankenstein's monster, because the golem is neither alive no...
What it comes down to is I don't mind if Superman kills people because he has no reason not to kill people. I know that one of the tenets of the character is that he doesn't, but the reason that he doesn't is because having that much power makes you ...
I wanted a woman who had the body and the power of a real pilot. I interviewed hundreds of woman, but Jessica just seemed perfect for the part. I couldn't get her out of my head. I continued to bother her and she finally gave in.
My favourite room in my house is easily the top room, which is a bedroom but also a bathroom, with a big, wooden carved bath, two huge fireplaces and a raised bit in the corner for performances. I've had some really lovely parties and poetry readings...
It's something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you're too awkward to do i...
Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.
