Several people, not just reviewers, took me to task for writing about what they called the working classes - something I've been doing for 40 years. I thought that was contemptible - what do they want to do, ghettoize the working class as a subject? ...
I thought about all the people who'd had to do this through history. The millions taking flight from disasters, fleeing tyrannical despots, making exodus from pogroms, escaping waring soldiers and pouring out of bombed cities. What had kept them goin...
You can feel the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-- no matter how smart or accomplished--they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking,...
Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are ...
All of us know at least one drama queen or drama king. These people love to yell and make a scene when they’re offended. While all of that screaming might make them feel better in the short term, in the long term it does nothing for their careers o...
I worked on 'Blue Peter' and 'Tonight' and lots of TV plays, filmed people like Rudolf Nureyev and Ted Heath, and ended up a senior cameraman with my own crew. I'd had my first short story published in 1947, and when my writing really started to take...
She was going to go home after this and sip red wine and stare at the wall, I could tell. She would wonder why she was doing this, struggling against commercial interests at a corporate hospital when all she wanted to do was help people, and in the m...
What we really have to do is stop the adjective before the job title—whether it's 'black actor,' a 'gay actor' or 'anything actor,' Everybody thinks that equality comes from identifying people, and that's not where equality comes from. Equality com...
Spend the most time with your best people. ... Talent is the multiplier. THe more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time. ... Persistence directed pr...
For indeed, what is more dire than the evils which today afflict the world? What is more terrible for the discerning than the unfolding events? What is more pitiable and frightening for those who endure them? To see a barbarous people of the desert o...
The very first big photo shoot I ever did was with Bruce Weber. I couldn't believe this guy was taking my picture, so when he told me to get in the bathtub, I just did. It's only now, looking back, that I realise, you don't have to do everything peop...
I believe God works through other people. So, if you think about that it means you are God for someone else. Every day, reach out and help someone. If you tell me you are poor and have nothing to give -- then give someone a genuine compliment or smil...
Still Caine hesitated. A big, warm bed. A beautiful girl to share it with. Food. Water. Everything he needed, just a few miles away on the island. The logical, rational answer was obvious. "Which is why the world stays messed up," Caine said under hi...
Stories about mental aberration and oddity only make sense in context. Just how do people live with someone who is peculiar, gifted, strange or alien? It's odd because there's a little part of me that wants to write about exotic, strange bizarre subj...
Mohammad never assigned himself a status more than a common man and a messenger of God. People had faith in him when he was surrounded by poverty and adversity and trusted him while he was the ruler of a great Empire. He was a man of spotless charact...
I like the multiplicity of books, because each book is different in the mind of each reader. It's the same with this film - if 300 people are in a cinema watching it, they will all see a different film, so in a way there are thousands of different ve...
People like the leaders; they like to follow them; they let the leaders to think on behalf of them; they like shepherds; they like to behave like sheep! For god’s sake, follow your own path, be an individual, be independent! Stop being a coach in t...
I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of...
The more you try to impress, the more you become depressed, and the more they get tired of your coercion. It doesn't make them love you, instead, they'll see you as a little child, trying to draw a senseless picture on a piece of paper, begging peopl...
Both my parents were agnostic. My mother was kind of a Buddhist. She had some spiritual tendencies, but they were kind of flaky - New Agey, you know? Which is partly why I'm suspicious of that sort of thing. I'm skeptical of any spiritual practice th...
Mr. Albert Einstein was right: If you feel you need to go one way, even when everyone else is going the other way, do so, do so to make positive changes in your life and for this world. I guarantee you, that you will never regret that decision. Belie...
