I had told my agents that I never wanted to do an hour-long TV show. I said, "I'm not that stupid. " Because it's the worst lifestyle in Hollywood.
If one knows exactly what is going to be done, why do it?
You cannot go against nature. She is stronger than the strongest of men. We can permit ourselves some liberties, but in details only.
The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous. I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous. . . I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.
Whatever is most abstract may perhaps be the summit of reality.
What I achieve the first day can be perfectly valid, but it is not satisfying. If I can go that far spontaneously, then I must shed that result as an old skin and inquire further into the unknown, or at least the not-yet-known-to-myself.
If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean.
To lunch with the important. . . that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.
Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.
Inexpensive phones and pay-as-you go services are already spreading mobile phone technology to many parts of that world that never had a wired infrastructure.
Jazz is America's classical music.