Samuel Johnson called it the vanity of human wishes, and Buddhists talk about the endless cycle of desire. Social psychologists say we get trapped on a hedonic treadmill. What they all mean is that we wish, plan and work for things that we think will make us happy, but when we finally get them, we aren't nearly as happy as we thought we'd be.
Great actors like Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page and Samuel L. Jackson will go and do a videogame, because they understand that storytelling isn't just necessarily about filmmaking.
The Romantic poets were the prototype ramblers, and I've often found myself following in their footsteps - although perhaps not all of their footsteps since a typical walk for Samuel T. Coleridge might last two days and cover 145km.
Gramercy Park is a four-acre square given in perpetuity to the residents surrounding it, 170 years ago, by Samuel Ruggles, a real estate developer of immoderate means.
Discovering Samuel Beckett in college was a big deal for me. I realized you could be very funny and very dark at the same time.
I produced and directed a movie a couple years ago that won some awards that Samuel Goldwyn released called 'The Last Good Time'. I wrote, produced and directed it, but I wasn't in it.
Quite naturally, the men who led in stirring up the revolt against Great Britain and in keeping the fighting temper of the Revolutionists at the proper heat were the boldest and most radical thinkers - men like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.
Big up Samuel L. Jackson, because here's a guy who has broken down doors.
For some reason, I got really obsessed with Samuel Pepys and his diaries when I read them, and with that period. I was probably a man with a wig and a frock coat in a past life!
To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.
