If people knew who the angels were, they would be very nice when they saw one and would still do their same evil garbage when they thought none were around. Knowing who they are defeats the purpose.
He knew that we gave constant lip service to the dictates of safety and howled like Christians condemned to the arena if any compromise were made of it. He knew we were seekers after ease, suspicious, egotistic, and stubborn to a fault. He also knew that none of us would have continued our careers unless we had always been, and still were, helpless before this opportunity to take a chance.
He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were sufficient to the moment or that would change a single thing.
You can never predict what an audience is going to respond to and what they're going to watch. What we always knew was that we were making something that we were proud of and that we thought was important, and we hoped that people would feel the same way.
If an ancient man saw planes two thousand years ago He would've thought they were birds Or angels from another world Or messengers from other planets.
You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined. You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone's yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.
There is a view that jazz is 'evil' because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good.
If you think that people should be nice to one another, then by
all means be nice. But when you project that belief onto the
people and the world around you as if it were an objective reality,
or worse still, as if it were their job to be nice to you, you put
yourself at odds with what is, and suffering will surely follow.
When I was in high school in the early 1970s, we knew we were running out of oil; we knew that easy sources were being capped; we knew that diversifying would be much better; we knew that there were terrible dictators and horrible governments that we were enriching who hated us. We knew all that and we did really nothing.
My thoughts were to become a dentist when I first went to Albany State. I didn't know where I would end up, but I knew I'd be happy, and I knew I would have a nice life. That was always my goal, to have a nice, happy life. That's, to me, being rich.
I thought it would be good for the engineers and workmen who were building my spacecraft to see the pilot who would have to fly it hanging around. It might make them just a little more careful than they already were and a little more eager to get the work done on time if they saw how much I cared.
I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people.
Girls were nice to me in the same way that they would be nice to a hamster. I fantasized about wild encounters with females but knew they'd never happen unless my own involvement could somehow go undetected.
The trouble when you die is that everyone says you were nice. I would like to be thought of as genuinely nice. I would like there to be people who can honestly say, 'Len! Oh yeah, there was more good than bad in him.'
The trouble when you die is that everyone says you were nice. I would like to be thought of as genuinely nice. I would like there to be people who can honestly say: "Len! Oh yeah, there was more good than bad in him.
We couldn't predict what would happen with 'Roots.' You knew there were powerful moments that were going to affect people. We were making the film while the book was being completed. We were fortunate because the hardcover book was out and on the best-seller list. The heat was still on.
I saw certain things that I think maybe other kids are protected from. Like, I saw my parents struggling. I knew that we were cutting out coupons and buying dented cans because they were cheaper. And all our furniture was from the garbage. It was just - and to me because I was a kid, all that stuff was really exciting.