I've always been more interested in what happens after the bad thing has happened - the fallout of the bad thing, when people are already damaged. I'm less interested in seeing people when they're fine and following their journey to becoming damaged.
Seeing my son getting roughed up by the police is not fun. It brings back memories of when I got roughed up by them. He grew up totally different than how I grew up, and to me, he shouldn't have to go through that.
I'm interested in acting because I'm interested in exploring humanity, and we're all nuts, we're all damaged, and we're all gorgeous, so anything less than that is dishonest to me.
All writers, I think, are to one extent or another, damaged people. Writing is our way of repairing ourselves.
Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint-of-heart, and if you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up.
For years I've been interested in a fundamental question concerning what I call the psychology of evil: Why is it that good people do evil deeds? I've been interested in that question since I was a little kid. Growing up in the ghetto in the South Bronx, I had lots of friends who I thought were good kids, but for one reason or another they ended up in serious trouble. They went to jail, they took drugs, or they did terrible things to other people. My whole upbringing was focused on trying to understand what could have made them go wrong.
The idea of fixing of healing is an important part of any genuine spiritual approach. Kabbalah is very much about this idea of fixing of things that have been damaged. From a Buddhist point of view, things have been damaged because ignorance has intoxicated the mind.
That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.
People from small towns have to have their edges roughed up to get along in the world. But as a street reporter, you learn quickly.
A Western writer came up to me and said, how come nobody at this demonstration spoke of German unity? I told him, because it isn't on the agenda. People were interested in having another, better GDR, another, better socialism.
I didn't think there was any way to convince Jack that he wanted more than I had to give, that to people who'd been damaged the way I had been, fear and the will to survive would always be more powerful than attachment. I could only love in a limited way
What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do.
My own perception of cops was that they came into your neighborhood, they roughed up people that you loved for no reason and took them away. As a child you saw that.
I just have always been so interested in the way actors and actresses present themselves to the world because I think it is very important and it affects the way people see you as an actor.
We are the damaged heirs of a damaged cultural style which has been practiced now for about seven thousand years.
Viewers have a way of remembering the celebrity while forgetting the product. I did not know this when I paid Eleanor Roosevelt $35,000 to make a commercial for margarine. She reported that her mail was equally divided. "One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation." Not one of my proudest memories.