Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures.
Last night, two men tried to force my shutters. I recognized them: they are two of Rodin's Italian models. He told them to kill me. I am in his way; he wants to get rid of me.
I've done all of them except for Oprah. My shoes were on Oprah but they ran out of time so I wasn't on. I left my shoes in Chicago so they could put them on the show.
Those who use our public services should be able to deal directly with those who manage and deliver them.
I have no memory for what happens in what books. I don't know when I might remember a scene, but beats me what book it's in because there are 14 of them now.
My concern has always been that people who I portray, or the professions that I portray, are not embarrassed by my portrayal of them.
You're in a much better position to talk with people when they approach you than when you approach them.
I grew up in a haunting postindustrial landscape where prehistoric ferns grew among tens of railway tracks surmounted by brilliant arc lights where birds nested and sang in the dead of night, because for them, it was day.
But more than that, I wanted my wife and my family to see how I can actually play this game. They haven't seen me at my best, and I want them to.
Kids who enter 'adulthood' without any strong attachments to people who know and care about them have a rough road ahead, to say the least.
At Marshall Field in Chicago, I had them take a big bed into the menswear department, one with black sheets. I'd get in bed wearing a nightcap, and my fans would get in bed with me, one at a time, and I'd sign their memorabilia. And then I'd give them a free pint of Ben & Jerry's.
I would say, from an all-around point of view, Bruce Springsteen is one of the two great poet lords of America, Bob Dylan, coming out of the music world, the two of them.
People who are incapable of having any kind of intimate relationship have to turn to feeling this incredible hunger and void, have to turn to some quantifiable external product to make them feel whole.
I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays - even great tragedies - have enormous humor in them.
Events like this mean we can give something back to the people that support us, and hopefully everyone will have a great day and we can put on a good show for them.
I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.
The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.
We must create economic opportunity, build a culture of entrepreneurship, get people to take responsibility for improving their lives, rather than putting them in a position where they sit back in their poverty and blame others for it.
I just want to make great films and be good in them. And I think that my perception of what's great in a film is constantly evolving.
We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.
I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.
A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often has no opportunity to exercise judgment.
In the 1880s, a weedy Easterner named Owen Wister had something like a nervous breakdown. Wyoming, with its wide-open spaces and healthy pursuits, was prescribed as a cure. Wister was immediately smitten by the taciturn cowboys and the rules imposed upon them by the cattle barons.
The first time you meet someone, they're a new acquaintance, the second time you have a bit of an understanding, and the third time you meet them, you're old hats.
I started doing the big Hollywood stuff, and I realised, 'Oh, there's no rehearsal at all; you just turn up on the set, and sometimes you haven't even met the other actor, or the woman who's playing your wife, and you're suddenly in bed with them.'
I don't think you can teach people how to be funny. You can make suggestions about how to speak a line or get a laugh, but it has to be in them.
The only thing wealth does for some people is to make them worry about losing it.
We've got to win them all and get help from other teams, but we are going to push until the end.
We used to go and play shows in the south in front of two people and now every show we did was just great. The warm-ups, most of those weren't even advertised and most of them were sold out. I don't know what's going on, it's just so much different than it used to be.
In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.
Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, 'Shake well before using.' That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.
People look at film in a gallery, and if they walk out after two minutes they know they haven't seen the whole work. But then people look at a painting for two minutes and think they've seen it. Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them.
I write songs. Then, I record them. And, later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple.
When I start writing these novels, I go into them with a spirit of inquiry rather than to substantiate prejudices I had in the beginning. If you don't do that, you can't write good characters.
