Were Quotes

Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.'

While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.

Yes, in all my research, the greatest leaders looked inward and were able to tell a good story with authenticity and passion.

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.

When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that.

I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn't even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.

Very ugly things were said about me.

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

I was in the Commons recently and saw a young lady wearing a nice pair of shoes. I said I liked them and she said my shoes were the reason she became involved in politics.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

My parents were what I like to call proper musical fans. Lots of Sondheim was played in the car.

I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.

I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing.

My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands and two of them were just napping.

My mom and I have always been really close. She's always been the friend that was always there. There were times when, in middle school and junior high, I didn't have a lot of friends. But my mom was always my friend. Always.

I grew up conservative because my mum was a conservative, and when I finally realized what conservatives were, I changed my mind immediately.

As a boy, I'd always had an interest in theater. But the idea at my school was that drama and music were to round out the man. It wasn't what one did for a living. I got over that.

I was born in a suburb of Paris, and I grew up there until I was 16, so there were always a lot of barbecues, a garden, friends.

We learned about gratitude and humility - that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean... and we were taught to value everyone's contribution and treat everyone with respect.

There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were quite devoid of goodness.

I've always had a huge fear of dying or becoming ill. The thing I'm most afraid of, though, is being alone, which I think a lot of performers fear. It's why we seek the limelight - so we're not alone, were adored. We're loved, so people want to be around us. The fear of being alone drives my life.

For many of us who were born and raised in this country, including me, it's sometimes easy to forget how special America really is.

I lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, until eighth grade, and then my high-school years were in Rochester, New York.

You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it's like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can't really speak on it, because I wasn't there. I don't feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

The '90s were a bit of a disaster for me in so many ways. On a personal level, I don't think I could have toured. Also, I had some physical problems with my back that are now sorted and I just wasn't in the right state of mind.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.