Screenplays are structure, and that’s all they are. The quality of writing—which is crucial in almost every other form of literature—is not what makes a screenplay work. Structure isn’t anything else but telling the story, starting as late as...
Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice...
The park lies directly downwind from a slew of coal plants. Virtually all of the major contaminants in the local air and water are direct results of coal emissions. Coal produces ozone, which kills trees. Coal produces sulfates, which kill fish. No o...
I used to not listen that much, but I've really learnt to listen to other people and to really listen to what they're saying. I've found, especially being on a film set, people have so many different stories; if you just listen, you can pick up so mu...
On one hand, we know that everything happens for a reason, and there are no mistakes or coincidences. On the other hand, we learn that we can never give up, knowing that with the right tools and energy, we can reverse any decree or karma. So, which i...
so is blurred so is blurred in me what white-haired gentleman separated once and for all and said this in the subject this is the object we fall asleep with one hand under our head and with the other in a mound of planets our feet abandon us and tast...
At every stage, the world that breaks in through our senses struggles to find a footing in our brains. We might liken memories to the messages recorded on tape, but we mistake the message for the medium, or the other way round, for memory is the tape...
When you are truly interested in other people, you will learn what they are interested in and if they have a need for your product. If they like you, and most people like folks who take an interest in them, they'll help you find people who do need wh...
I was lucky I went to school in London because the tutors could see what to do. I knew I wanted to do something different. Why would I want to do what other people were already doing, because they would always do it better? I always wanted to work ar...
I wake up at 4:15 A.M., get some coffee, turn on the news, see what's happening, go clickety-clack on the web to see what I missed overnight. Then I go to the gym, around 5:15, and I do what appears to be a very light workout, but who cares. I'm soci...
We never went into a game that we did not feel sure of winning, and when we lost, we blamed it on hard luck or the umpires. We never gave any other team credit for being able to play ball, and the result was that we were hard to beat. If I could get ...
I've got bills to pay like everyone else. I'm a high-earner but I don't see myself as rich. I know in some people's eyes I probably am, but I will always have to work. My son Matt asked me if we were rich the other day and I told him that in my view,...
Al Sharpton came to fame by perpetuating a racial fraud, basically waving the racial bloody red shirt, and that's what unfortunately too many Democrats and too many progressives do. They don't argue the issues, they don't argue policy, they're out wi...
In certain situations, manifesting anger is the right attitude; in others it is not the right thing to manifest because it will only add to the violence. In the first case, anger unblocks the conflict and causes another to become more conscious. In t...
Jonah-John-if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still-not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places, at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both convent...
Their musical ability and performance seems to derive from the past collective experience and presents itself in the individual unconscious today. Through it we tap into something eternal and it is apparent even in how they approach their playing. Pe...
We were bred of earth before we were bred of our mothers. Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's h...
Yet she belongs, finally and truly, only to God. The hijab is a symbol of freedom from the male regard, but also, in our time, of freedom from subjugation by the iron fist of materialism, deterministic science, and the death of meaning. It denotes so...
Strike had never wanted children; it was one of the things on which he and Charlotte had always agreed, and it had been one of the reasons other relationships over the years had foundered. Lucy deplored his attitude, and the reasons he gave for it; s...
In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific kn...
Love shouldn’t be something you jump into because it’s the right time in your life or because your friends are all married. It should be something that happens naturally, and in the end it turns into the supernatural because suddenly, you can’t...
