Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.
In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness.
What you do is, you have your drawing board and a pencil in hand at the telescope. You look in and you make some markings on the paper and you look in again.
Getting a chance to practice six months against my own teammates, who I consider the best soccer players in the world, there's no way I couldn't improve.
Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
But to this day I am convinced that the real reason we met was because Alexander is from Nebraska, and he was completely fascinated that I was about to go off and make a movie with Brando - perhaps the most famous Nebraskan of all.
I had a scene where the chair was meant to slide off the table, but do you think it would slide off? No. We were running out of time and we had to get these scenes done urgently.
Otherwise we get off the track and we do not fulfil the historical role which we want to fulfil: to help the masses, the exploited and the oppressed of the world, build a classless society, a world socialist federation.
If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren't my fans anyway. I couldn't betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to.
Certainly, my father would not want to see me destroy myself in this business, as so many people in our family have been destroyed. I try to take good care of myself, but we are fighting the good fight, and the truth is powerful.
True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one's true character, to be altogether one's self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion.
We are different, in essence, from other men. If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon.
I got asked by a freelance journalist to jump in front of Princess Diana's funeral. How pathetic is that? That would have been the stupidest thing on the planet.
To work without attachment is to work without the expectation of reward or fear of any punishment in this world or the next. Work so done is a means to the end, and God is the end.
It puzzled me that other people hadn't found out, too. God was gone. We were younger. We had reached past him. Why couldn't they see it? It still puzzles me.
Countries and states which have capital punishment have a much higher rate of murder and crime than countries that do not, so that makes sense to me, and the moral question - I struggle with it morally.
In the last couple of years I've been facing down a lot of the demons of the past and trying to find out, who I am, It's something I think I'll be doing for the rest of my life.
The key to any successful plan is buy-in from the public, and what this process has demonstrated is the importance of including citizens in formulating a consensus plan that preserves our beautiful refuge.