One measure of twentieth-century time is the supersonic three and three-quarter hours it takes the Concorde to fly from New York to Paris, gate to gate. Other measures come with the waits on the expressways and the runways.
I am blessed for what I have, but I believed in it from the beginning. Today, the dream is the same: I still want to travel, I still want to entertain, and I most certainly still want to have fun.
I don't think I'd be happy if I were satisfied. I enjoy challenge, and I wouldn't say that I'm an ambitious person career-wise or financially, really. I would like to travel more comfortably, but that's really about all I need.
I really encourage people to travel so we can see how the rest of the world views our country. That's really important. Secondly, as artists, activists, and citizens who vote, we have to begin to vote from our heart.
When you're CEO, you have to have two conditions: first, shareholders need to trust you and want you to head your company. The second is that you need to feel the motivation to do the job. So, as long as both are reunited, you continue to do the job.
People want to see something authentic. If it's too polished and highly produced, people might not trust it as much. If it's grainy, if it's coming from a webcam, if it's someone standing there and talking their mind or sharing their thoughts, people...
Ernest Hemingway: You'll never be a great writer if you fear dying, do you? Gil: Yeah, I do. I would say it's my greatest fear.
Adriana: Let's go! Ernest Hemingway: One of these days I plan to steal you away from this genius [points to Picasso] Ernest Hemingway: who's great... But... he's no Miro.
Ernest Hemingway: If you're a writer, [slams fist on table] Ernest Hemingway: declare yourself the best writer. But your not, as long as I'm around, unless you want to put the gloves on and settle it.
I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.
Here in New Orleans, what a lot of the musical families do - and this is a romantic concept on my part - is they teach their kids to tap dance first. Then after tap dance, you learn piano, and after piano, you get to pick between all the instruments ...
They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it...
It's a terrific... you can't put it down. So I phoned him back and I said I'd love to do it. I went over to Paris for a meeting, and we just talked very generally about the approach.
Pop music has been all but relegated to the remainder bin at MTV and VH1, where high-maintenance concoctions such as Paris Hilton, Flavor Flav, and Hulk Hogan's biohazard clan of bleached specimens provide endless hours of death-hastening diversion.
When I went to Paris, I had a lot of ideas about it that were formed in the sort of ether that flows about if you watch too many recent Woody Allen movies or took French classes as a kid. I was certainly full of those.
When I was an adolescent, I abandoned my country at 23 years to come to Paris to know Andre Breton, the 'Pope of Surrealism.' And for three years, I was there working with him being a surrealist.
Our talks in Paris tackled economic, democratic, security and political issues; we talked on means for combating terrorism, in addition to latest regional and international developments of mutual interest, especially those in region.
I wanted to have a reaction from the audience. I wanted to be able to talk to somebody, and not be talking just to myself. That's when I did 'The Conformist,' 'Last Tango in Paris,' etc. And I found it was incredibly rewarding, something new.
But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.
Paris is a place where, for me, just walking down a street that I've never been down before is like going to a movie or something. Just wandering the city is entertainment.
O bid me mount and sail up there Amid the cloudy wrack, For Peg and Meg and Paris' love That had so straight a back, Are gone away, and some that stay Have changed their silk for sack.
