As a writer, you have to be willing to kill your darlings, and I'm a writer first. As a director, I've got no problem cutting the scenes.
I don't mind being criticized intelligently; although I don't love it.
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.
I think it is time for a new pride in the intellectual life, and a new impatience with people who take pride in ignorance, or somehow use "elite" to mean "person who has taken the time to know" and then are eager to dismiss, say, striving, or the notion that improving one's self out of difficult conditions is a noble thing.
The thing I've discovered that is a help is that there isn't a simple virtue or a simple vice. They're always connected. If you have Tendency A, that you loathe, you can almost be sure that Tendency B, which you love, is somehow connected to it.
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded. . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams.
When my husband was president, we went from a $300 billion deficit to a $200 billion surplus and we were actually on the path to eliminating the national debt. When President Obama came into office, he inherited the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. He has cut the deficit by two-thirds.
When you see a fashion show, you see those seven minutes of what was six months of tedious work of, you know, going up an inch and down an inch, changing it from one shade of red to another shade of red. So it's the same as any creative process. The result is what we see, but the process is really labor intensive and work.
Collectors are paying for our education by purchasing our art.