It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.
If I look in the mirror when I get up or before going to bed at night, I see a man of average ugliness with stubble, an unruly mane of hair, a squint nose, slightly protruding ears, and bags under my eyes. But I also see a man who's completely happy with the figure staring back at him.
From our ugliness will grow the soul of the world.
Music is about truth, and truth contains the ugliness and the dark and evil and hate and sadness as well as the happiness and beauty and everything in between. Having all those extremes is itself a satisfying, positive thing.
Why do we go around acting as though everything was friendship and reliability when basically everything everywhere is full of sudden hate and ugliness?
The job of art is to chase ugliness away.
'Ragtime' is about how we get through ugliness, how we talk together, work together, get through it together.
I want to take people away from the ugliness and sadness around us every day and bring beautiful, deep music to as many people as I can.
We create our own government. We are responsible for its beauty and for its ugliness. We are responsible for its glories and for its failures and, most important, we are responsible for amending those failures no matter who are their most immediate architects.
I can understand the validity of showing people the ugliness of the world, but I also think there is a place for movies to leave people with a sense of hope.
