There are many things which swallow up men's thoughts while they live, which they will think little of when they are dying. Hundreds are wholly absorbed in political schemes and seem to care for nothing but the advancement of their own party. Myriads...
I wish the music business was a much easier thing, but you know what? Nothing easy is worth anything. So it is what it is. There comes a time when things can work out and everybody can be happy. And that's what it's all about in the end - everybody b...
You show up in Paris, and on the drive from the airport to the hotel you're like, 'This is so cool! I want to see something! I want to go to the Eiffel Tower!' And then you leave the next morning. You think, Oh, I didn't get to do anything. I tell pe...
Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence - in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement - wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change th...
As I lay so sick on my bed, from Christmas till March, I was always praying for poor ole master. 'Pears like I didn't do nothing but pray for ole master. 'Oh, Lord, convert ole master;' 'Oh, dear Lord, change dat man's heart, and make him a Christian...
I've continually reminded myself that I never want to change. I could be on the cover of a magazine today, but next week someone else is going to be on that cover. You always have to remain the same person because when those opportunities end, guess ...
Changing anything in the past, if you believe it's possible, could alter the entire future of the world, including my own birth, so I'd change nothing. Not a thing. As for the future... I think I'd like to see how it all ends, which is probably why I...
You bet every member of Congress who votes for this bill ought to read it, read it thoroughly, and understand that what we're looking at here amounts to nothing more than a government takeover of our health care economy, paid for with nearly a trilli...
Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give - pleasure, possessions, ...
There was a time in L.A. when I drove to 7-Eleven to go grocery shopping, and I locked my keys in my car, which wasn't insured. My wallet was in there, and I couldn't call AAA, because I only had $7 in my bank account. It was one of those moments whe...
Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it...
My stylist has really great taste - Petra Flannery has really great taste. I mean, I am opinionated, and as time goes on, as I've gotten to see more dresses or more clothes, it's easier to say, 'I like that' or 'I don't like that,' but it's nothing I...
The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then...
I'll never forget one morning I walked in and I had a hell of a bruise - it had been a difficult night the night before - and a client said to me, 'Good God, Vidal, what happened to your face?' And I said, 'Oh, nothing, madam, I just fell over a hair...
I was very lucky because hanging out at a golf course was much better than being on the streets. Golf taught me a great deal. I grew up surrounded by people who were professionals - lawyers, doctors, engineers. Around them, I learned how to behave, s...
I hate shows, personally, where people stand around tossing stuff at each other, and any character can say any line, because you don't believe any of these characters care for each other. I used to fight with my friends who wrote on 'Seinfeld,' becau...
The point is that when I see a sunset or a waterfall or something, for a split second it's so great, because for a little bit I'm out of my brain, and it's got nothing to do with me. I'm not trying to figure it out, you know what I mean? And I wonder...
I believe we all have the capacity to be masters of many things, and there's nothing that we can't do. You can be a great actor and also be a great writer. There's so many things that all of us have the capacity to do. But somehow, life tries to conv...
When I made 'Real Steel,' the director actually had the robots in the monitor, so he knew where everything was. So technically, there's been advancements. But at the end of the day, movies are about story and characters, so all the other stuff is gre...
As far as writing, I like watching bad movies. Nothing stops me in my tracks more than watching a great film like 'The Godfather' or 'Dog Day Afternoon' or 'The Graduate.' You watch one of those, and you never want to write again. Whereas with bad mo...
At one point I would read nothing that was not by the great American Jews - Saul Bellow, Philip Roth - which had a disastrous effect of making me think I needed to write the next great Jewish American novel. As a ginger-haired child in the West of Ir...
