There is always a mix of apprehension and excitement before you try songs out on a new audience.
Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.
(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.
Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them.
Children all over the world consort quite naturally with animals. They don't see any dividing line. That is something they have to be taught, just as they have to be taught it is all right to kill and eat them.
The highest type of intelligence, says Aristotle, manifests itself in an ability to see connections where no one has seen them before, that is, to think analogically.
Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary.
When something's hard, smiling helps us in the end, and it becomes fun.
Only dull and impotent artists screen their work with sincerity. In art there is need for truth, not sincerity.
The Hadley Street Dream is a tribute to making a vision come to life. My father built a compound on a dessert city block, he saw something in that space we couldn't see. It was years later the album was born right there on Hadley St. He built the studio I started recording the album at.
It was when Boston invited us to do a parade one November, and I was the only [Star Wars] cast member skeptical of the willingness of people to come out to see us five actors drive by in antique cars in the Boston rain. Well, it was the first time I really understood the show's popularity.