People who are against me attack me personally. They attack the way I look physically, they attack the way I dress, they attack everything but what I say.
You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.
How quickly people can forget you, until they want something from u" and when they are done with you, you are not even a stranger but an invisible person who doesn't even exist.
The whole atmosphere of the book, the tone of 'The Hobbit,' is of a kid's adventure story, told in the first person by Tolkien, who is introducing young people to the notion of Middle-earth. A lot of it is very light-hearted.
Intelligent, successful, attractive people can be intimidating. They force us to hold a mirror to ourselves; we can be disappointed, jealous or inspired toward personal growth.
My personal opinion is that you can't be racist towards white people. You can be prejudiced about them, but being prejudiced isn't an illegal act, whereas being racist can be.
Literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.
I've tried not to get sucked into the Hollywood hierarchy system. Personally, I don't like it when people are deferential to me because I'm an established filmmaker. It's a blue-collar sensibility.
Returning to South Carolina meant getting a normal job in a normal town with normal people and marrying a normal person. I wanted the glamour and opportunity of the world.
I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I've never even met.
When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.
It seemed to me... that the only valid people to deal with crime were cops, and I would like to make the lead character, rather than a single person, a squad of cops.
Evangelicals can't be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle, to preach to all the people, right and left.
We can continue our progress as a Nation toward the promise that all people are created equal and that our Nation will treat every person in that spirit.
Well, I'm not a violent person. You have to back off. People sometimes will try you and try you until you try not to, but you have to react. Normally, I just walk away.
A lot of times I make people better by getting stupid, distracting, bureaucratic stuff off their desk. That's an incredibly easy way to make a senior person more productive.
In effect, I feel like a blind, deaf, and illiterate person working through the sensibilities and multiple, real talents of other people. Everything I do is collaborative.
The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim.
Personally, of course it's exasperating when people think you're just swanning around in Europe, going to the occasional fashion show and then being glamorous at a party.
I've been ripped for being too sensitive, but I do think people need to walk in another person's shoes before they accuse them of being too sensitive.
Wen I die, my money is not gonna come with me. My movies will live on for people to judge what I was as a person. I just want to stay curious and keep smiling like the joker
