I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.
To me that's part of my working day, and I would never refuse a job where I'm under several hours of makeup, because as an actor, I enjoy performing. It's about the creation of the character and the art to me, not about being comfortable and how long it all takes.
I always saw hurdles as a form of art, because it's very individual. One technique that may produce a world record for one guy could be useless for another guy.
The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn... tired of common sense and civilization.
Writing, more than any other art, is indexed to the worthiness of the self because it is identified in people's minds with emotion.
Although not considered a martial art, boxing is really a martial art. It's a very limited martial art as long as you agree to just box... but in an actual physical fight against someone who's just a wrestler, you're going to get killed.
Wrestling needs to be about the art form again. It needs to be about painting a picture and having a really good match.
To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
People become writers in the first place by those things that hurt you into art, as Yeats said it. Then they become separated from what started out affecting them. Journalism forces you to look at the world so you don't get cut off.
If we learn the art of yielding what must be yielded to the changing present, we can save the best of the past.
When you are a young actor, you're imbued with the high purpose of your art. You think, 'They hire me for my talent; if that's not good enough, then they can hire somebody else.' Later, you realize that your body is as much a part of what you do as your talent.
I say this to young actors: You don't get into this because you think you're average. You get into this because you think, 'I'm good.' It's an art form, and I'm an artist. But as an artist, you know there's not a soul in the world that's going to believe in you other than yourself.
I think that I came of age in the 1970s with my own work, and it was a time of conceptual and process art, and it was very important not to tell a story. If you told a story, when I was a young artist and first came to N.Y., it was, like, an embarrassing way to make art.
I began drawing as a very young child and had a grandfather who experimented with photography, so those things constituted my first exposure to art.
Being a musician has actually surrounded and immersed me in pop culture and youth culture from a very young age. But even before I was singing in bands and creating any kind of art, I was always fascinated by pop culture.