How do you do that?” Mennis asked, frowning. “What?” “Smile so much. ” “Oh, I’m just a happy person.
When someone brutally kills someone else, we call him "animalistic. " But we consider ourselves "human" when we give to the poor.
If you are a cooperative animal, you need to watch what you get. If you, or even a whole community, invest in something but then a few individuals receive a much larger return, it's not a good arrangement. If it happens consistently, it's time to look for an arrangement that is more beneficial. That's why we're so sensitive to how rewards are being divided.
You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. I'm not saying that you can derive moral rules from nature - that's deriving an ought from an is, as the philosophers say - but you do need to know what kind of animals we are if you want to design a stable society.
Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.
Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.
If you want to design a successful human society, you need to know what kind of animal we are. Are we a social animal or a selfish animal? Do we respond better when we're solitary or living in a group?
One nice thing about putting the thing away for a couple of months before looking at it is that you start appreciate your own wit. Of course, this can be carried too far. But it's kind of cool when you crack up a piece of writing, and then realize you wrote it. I recommend this feeling.
As a musician, I don't have one thing that's "my thing. " I like to create, and have a lot of outlets for it. Dustin Hoffman is one of the guys that sets a model for me, because of how good he is at being such different characters. Every time you see DeNiro, he's pretty much DeNiro - great, but DeNiro. Hoffman is different every time, depending on his character. That's how I see myself as a performer.
I'd recommend the high road to anybody. You wonder about it and you don't really appreciate it until you do it and you find that it worked for everyone. But I recommend it.
There's always an intellectual side to the films Ang Lee's doing and to the characters, and there's such a deep knowledge when you've worked with the actors that he's worked with, on stage in particular, but also in film.