My greatest hope is to be able to pass the same dreams and hopes and vision that I've been able to enjoy in my life, on to the next generation. Not just for my children - because with a mother like Michelle, my kids are going to be great - but for all children. There are too many children in this country for whom the American dream is so distant and the odds against them are so daunting.
Women who bring up children by themselves do it heroically, they do it against all odds, men who don't feel responsible for being part of their child's life create real strains on that family.
In Las Vegas, people know that the odds are stacked against them. On Wall Street, they manipulate the odds while you are playing the game.
I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor - anybody can do that - but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.
We have a generation of women who think that they can just have IVF, and everything will be fine. The odds are against you once you start having IVF, and the odds are against you over the age of 35. And to pretend that it's easy to have a baby in your 40s or 50s is - it's just selling women a false dream.
I just know that there are a lot of people out there who are younger than I am, and I wish to be a role model for them. If they have a dream, I want to help them keep that motivation high, so that they can realize their dream. I want to show people that they CAN have fun in life.
Why do you dream? - because there are so many desires unfulfilled, and to live with unfulfilled desires is painful. In dream you try to fulfill them; in dream you create a false feeling of fulfillment. Hence your dreams show much about you: what your desires are, what you want to become. But if you want to become anything in life, you are asleep.
We can live closer to our dreams if we are willing to dream them. And we can create a life as we want it to be.
If you educate children, then they are capable of so much - you empower them, you give them choices, and you enable them to create the lives that they dream for themselves.
Never mind the odds against you. If you doubled your effort, what would the odds against you do — send for reinforcements?
We didn't want to live anymore in the old logic. And I like that. The consequence of that is to create the dream of that, but we all know this dream may be not possible. So here we have the key of the ambiguity of the atmosphere of my films. Is it possible, this dream? Is it as funny as it seems, or is it tragic?
The truth is that it has not been my pipe dream to have a restaurant. I know restaurateurs, and the amount of work that goes into a restaurant is nothing short of insanity. It's a real commitment, and most restaurants don't make it, so the odds are really against you.
That's like a dream come true. To be able to hire friends, to shoot a movie in the neighborhood where you grew up. To have it released. It's actually a dream. How many people can say that their first film got distributed and out there? What are the odds? My persistence made the odds work for me.
To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, is more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.
To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.
If you want to do something for your children and show how much you love them, the single best thing-by far-is to support organizations that will create a better world for them and their children.