We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
I’ll never forget Hurricane Katrina – the mix of a natural and a man-made catastrophe that resulted in the death of over 1,500 of our neighbors. Millions of folks were marked by the tragedy.
Take stock of your thoughts and behavior. Each night ask yourself, when were you negative when you could have been positive? When did you withhold love when you might have given it? When did you play a neurotic game instead of behaving in a powerful way? Use this process to self-correct.
The Native American cultures on this continent, most of them, were matrilineal, and some women were the chiefs. Societies were about balance.
Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.
When you’re safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.
Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.
When I was playing in the Ajax youth teams – when I was, say, 14, 15 – you started to get all those international youth tournaments. All those English teams came. Well, the English were much further than we were.
It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.
I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.
Was it not enough punishment and suffering in history that we were uprooted and made helpless slaves not only in new colonial outposts but also domestically.
If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.
Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. But I’d like to add a third certainty: trash. And while some in this room might want to discuss reducing taxes, I want to talk about reducing trash.
If the choice were made, one for us to lose our sovereignty and become a member of the Commonwealth or remain with our sovereignty and lose the membership of the Commonwealth, I would say let the Commonwealth go.
My parents divorced. There was the usual awkward business of going between them, but I was mostly with my mother. She remarried to a Greek painter Nico Ghika, so we were always around artists and intellectuals.
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
My husband. He keeps me grounded. If I were in the world on my own, it would all be much more seductive. But I’m in a relationship that has nothing to do with the film world.
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.
If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.
When I was young we weren’t even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it ‘vernacular,’ as if only English was the real tongue.
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
Before agriculture was invented, land was not a resource. Before oil drilling and nuclear fission were invented, petroleum and uranium were not resources.
I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.
I was born in Faridabad but brought up in Delhi and Mumbai. My father had been living hand-to-mouth and literally slept on railway platforms when he came to Mumbai for the first time to become a film singer. My parents were both singers; they sang together and fell in love due to their singing.
As the years went by, working on Broadway, I started seeing that I had a fan base and that they were mostly young girls. They are looking for someone that they can look up to, that they see as a role model. And I don’t take that lightly; it’s a big responsibility.
Charity But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
I made a point of eating so fast I never kept the other people waiting who generally ordered only chef’s salad and grapefruit juice because they were trying to reduce. Almost everybody I met in New York was trying to reduce.
The human longings that are deep inside of us never go away. They exist across cultures; they exist throughout life. When people were first made, our deepest longing was to know and be known. And after the Fall, when we all got weird, it’s still our deepest longing – but it’s now also our deepest fear.
Even when we talked about child labor, we were frowned upon. But then you know that you have to speak the truth irrespective of the repercussions.
Along the way, let’s never forget that once we were children and that we were all playing together without distinction of skin color, society level, or where people come from. Adults need to remember to play and to be more childlike in our behavior. We’ve forgotten what that childlike experience was like.
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
We had been told many times that astronauts would not make any mistakes. They were trained to be perfect.
As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldn’t necessarily be good.
Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that from us also.
The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.
I acted all the way up until Princeton. It was just one of my favorite extracurricular activities. Then I got to Princeton and had a really conservative vibe. All my friends were planning on law school, med school, or Wall Street, and suddenly acting seem like a really risky proposition.
Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.
I looked up to my parents because they were very successful in what they wanted to do. I was lucky; I didn’t have to look far for role models.
I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
Our beliefs, our values shape the way we look out at the world and the way we treat it. If we believe that we were here, placed here by God, that this – all of this creation is for us, it’s for us to go and occupy, dominate and exploit, then we will proceed to do that.
Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
Throughout my life, there are four people I’ve met who were truly original people. The other three were Groucho Marx, Jim Morrison, and Pablo Picasso.
Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.
We just were saying no more police brutality. And we had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places.
When you don’t manage your life well, you become angry and frustrated as things don’t go as intended, and our bad mood is a sign showing we were not able to resolve the conflict.
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
The signing of the Sex Pistols was a turning point for Virgin. It put the company on the map and, over the years, attracted bands such as Genesis, the Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, and Janet Jackson. It also attracted Culture Club, who were ground-breaking.
