Apes beat their chests so they don't have to fight 24 hours a day.
The whole idea of going out to a movie was really a secularized version of going to church.
Time will tell whether I am a wing nut or a megalomaniac. The difference between a cult and faith is time.
With 'Nostromo', Joseph Conrad said that he had wanted to write a novel about the degradation of an idea. That's what we wanted to show in the case of Dustin Hoffman's character, Bernstein.
The predicate of modern medicine is, 'We invalidate your humanity, but we give you immortality, so you have to shut up and listen to us.'
Even having all the time in the world, it's better to collaborate with your brothers and sisters. It's ultimately the richest experience.
When someone is good at what he does but is a nonconformist, there is a temptation in horse racing, like in all kinds of other areas of human endeavor, to dismiss him for his nonconformity rather than to recognize him for his excellence.
A syndicate is a group that has gotten together to pool their money so they can cover more contingencies. If I come to track with, say, $200, and I join a syndicate of 20 people, each of whom can bet $200, we can spread our bets, and that gives us a better chance of winning.
I've been beaten. I know what that's like. They say, 'Who has been a nail can learn to be a hammer.' So I know what it is to beat people.
I had proposed to HBO a series about the city cops in Rome at the time of Nero. What had interested me was the idea of order without law. The Praetorian Guard, who were the emperor's guards, understood how they were to proceed. But for the city cops, who were called the Urban Cohorts, there was no law at all.
Faulkner wrote for film, and his ear is just impeccable.
Ego suppression can be an act of ostentation.
It's kind of an intuitive process. I wish that it were more systematic, but it just isn't.
The truth is I try to show up each day available to do the work that God or whatever it is that's making, you know, the solar system work wants me to do. And I expect when he wants me to stop, I'll be the first to find out.
Faulkner speaks to us on the questions of race, the challenges of modernity, and modern man's dilemma in all of its aspects. That he is able to specify among those and bring those themes alive is one of his great gifts. There are so many different kinds of pleasures one gets from encountering those materials.
I remember when I was reading 'The Bear,' I was reading as a kid. All these years later, one returns to that for an entirely different reason.
There is not an amount of money that a writer can earn that I can't blow.
All I do is work and be with my family.
So much of what we do is shame-based, and when you're teaching, you have the opportunity to answer to the best parts of your nature, so I'm always grateful for that chance.
When I was working on 'Deadwood', it was understood that the script was a work in progress, and when we got to set, everyone would kind of work on it together.
