Everyone thinks these are self-portraits but they aren't meant to be. I just use myself as a model because I know I can push myself to extremes, make each shot as ugly or goofy or silly as possible.
The political system loves the extremes, it doesn't so much show a lot love for the moderates.
Before Watergate and Viet Nam, the American public, as a whole, believed everything it was told, and since then it doesn't believe anything, and both of those extremes hurt us because they prevent us from recognizing the truth.
I haven't got anything against films that are about the minutia of relationships or customs, but I love extremes.
One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.
The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it's natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous, and I'm afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what's there, to embrace it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn.
I have an affinity towards extremes.
People don’t like what’s happened to the big parties. They think they’ve been dragged off to the extremes. They think the quality of leadership is below what a country like the United Kingdom ought to have available. And they want something different.
From China and India to Turkey and Brazil, when women have gotten access to education, to family planning and to a vital place in the economy, greater prosperity has followed. And when women are free to speak and learn, they temper the extremes of ideology and fanaticism and raise sons who are less likely to become human bombs.
We never know who we are going to be until we are tested, but perhaps we can test ourselves without going to the extremes of war. Perhaps we can be kinder now, live with less now, reach out to others now - and build an inner reserve of a strong identity that will hold us up even when everything else falls away.
