It's always interesting to me to see people projecting things, like people would say, "This record is much more mature than your other record" and I would think, "Well, this record has more songs from when I was 18 on it than the other one."
Dirt's a funny thing,' the Boss said. 'Come to think of it, there ain't a thing but dirt on this green God's globe except what's under water, and that's dirt too. It's dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain't a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?
I've a track record of successful comedy films spread over more than a decade.
You can be a lot more subtle on TV, which is funny because I feel like TV is known for being the opposite of that. The thing we experience in life is that things are not overly dramatic, and things often happen in really small ways.
The thing that has made YouTube so successful is that you can relate to the people you're watching to a much higher degree than to the people you see on TV.
Norman Mailer loved women so much. I mean probably more than anything in the world he loved women. He got put into a position where he was kind of seen as the anti-feminist, although he was for the feminist movement. He just didn't want people to get consumed with the idea that this was going to be much better. He said, "Look, women should be treated equally and fairly."
I was treated much better in Africa than I was treated in America. And you see, often I get letters like this: "Go back to Africa."
The live thing is separate from the record for me. I have to figure out a way to make the songs work live. It's always going to be different than it is on a record, because every record I've made, there are people playing parts on there that are not going to be coming on tour with me. As much as still feeling connected to it, it's more like rediscovering.
The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things . . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one's home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.
People often ask me if I can justify the amount I earn, and I say I get paid that much because someone thinks it is worth their while to pay me that much, and if I they didn't they'd soon stop. That said, no one's more surprised at the money thing than me.
I largely defer to the cognitive ethologists. I believe that the arguments that they make on this score are extremely persuasive. More than this, I do think as well that a priori objections by philosophers to successful research programs in the sciences have a very bad track record.
I've always believed certain things: You treat everybody nicely because, more than anything, it's the right thing to do. And then you also never know when someone will be in position to help you or hurt you. I know I've gotten help from a lot of people who said good things about me because I treated them well.
Many successful people are no more talented than unsuccessful people. The difference between them lies in the old axiom that successful people do those things that unsuccessful people don't like to do.
Oftentimes the fascinating thing is that people who are seen as commanding figures at the moment that they were considered for President and did not run turned out to be treated by history as much more minor figures politically.
For the scene where I had to taste dirt, I was ready to do it for real. But our amazing art team said it would hurt my teeth and created fake dirt out of chocolate on ice cream Pig Bar.'
Dirt used to be a badge of honor. Dirt used to look like work. But we've scrubbed the dirt off the face of work and consequently we've created this suspicion of anything that's too dirty.