“If anxiety is the major force of our contemporary condition, a lot of poetry - including my own, mostly - sort of tries to escape that, fly off into magical thinking or bewilderment or whatever.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 1033 of 4756
“I think the team will think this was an O.K. year. Some guys had career years, but the reality is that we didn't get it done at the end of the day.”
“I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.”
“Speed is the form of ecstasy the technical revolution has bestowed on man. As opposed to a motorcyclist, the runner is always present in his body, forever required to think about his blisters, his exhaustion; when he runs he feels his weight, his age, more conscious than ever of himself and of his time of life. This all changes when man delegates the faculty of speed to a machine: from then on, his own body is outside the process, and he gives over to a speed that is noncorporeal, nonmaterial, pure speed, speed itself, ecstasy speed.”
“Aesthetic racism is almost always a sign of inexperience. Those who have not made their way far enough into the world of amorous delights judge women only by what can be seen. But those who really know women understand that the eye reveals only a minute fraction of what a woman can offer us. When God bade mankind be fruitful and multiply, Doctor, He was thinking of the ugly as well as of the beautiful. I am convinced I might add, that the aesthetic criterion does not come from God but from the devil. In paradise no distinction was made between ugliness and beauty.”
“Only from the perspective of such a utopia is it possible to use the concepts of pessimism and optimism with full justification: an optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.”
“Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives, but they think they know all about Stendhal's or Faulkner's.”
“If we can successfully lift the stranglehold of bureaucracy and old ways of thinking, we can see some real innovation in biodiversity conservation in Egypt as has occurred elsewhere in the world. It's the government's call. If they continue to put people in high-level positions that have no knowledge, experience or even interest in environment, Egypt will not advance. The country has very good national experts so why not use them?”
“I'm not really sure what people's preconceived notions are. I don't look at the gossip websites - it's unhealthy and I think it's a large part of what drives people in L.A. crazy.”
“You think you can marry for your own pleasure, friend?”
“I think a lot of actors are overly concerned about being well liked in the parts they play.”
“I'm probably an actor that tends to, instead of putting things on, think about it more in terms of taking away what's not in the character, until I'm left with what is. If that makes sense. That's probably a particularly American way of working, but maybe not. The end of any movie is a readjustment.”
“I think it's damaging to know too much about a person, about an actor.”
“I still don't look like what I think I look like.”
“I don't want to get hung up on what 'people,' that nebulous mass, think about me. That's the way to unhappiness, I think.”
“Is the U.S. better or is the world better? Is the U.S. better off today than we were four years ago? Obviously not, economically not. I think our stature in the world is not the same.”
“You see the images that the public is demanding. Why more reality-based TV? You'd think that after the first Survivor it would have gone away, but it hasn't. The public demands it because they get all caught up in the personal stories, and want to see more and more.”
“You're not going to be able to look like anyone else, no matter how hard you try, unless you're a mimic, then you're not acting, you're just mimicking. You can't go on being John Wayne, that's John Wayne. So you're not going to steal from John Wayne. I'm not going to steal from John Wayne and you're not going to come back and say 'Didn't you get that from the circus?' You know. But he is one of those people who instructs me, whom I look up to - whom I think is one of the masters of his craft that I am so enamoured of.”
“I think one of the things when you're casting children is you're also casting their parents.”
“I think you take a job, you owe it as much passion as the job itself demands. And most jobs demand that you be totally committed.”