It's not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.
The person I am every single day is the person that's growing and getting better. The more people look up to me, the more important it is to be concise with what message I want to leave. That's where I feel like I'm a role model. Maybe not to everyone, but for a lot of minorities, I am, and I kinda love that - the role model for the underdog.
Minimalism has a connotation of being reductive, and not in the best way. 'Brevetist' is a better term. I'm trying to be as concise as possible and still getting across to the reader. When information is delivered in that way, it is very satisfying to me.
It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.
I learned to read a little in my primer, to write my own name, and to cypher some in the three first rules in figures. And this was all the schooling I ever had in my life, up to this day. I should have continued longer if it hadn't been that I concluded I couldn't do any longer without a wife, and so I cut out to hunt me one.
What is interesting to me about film, and documentary film in particular, is that I can write about these people, and you trust my judgment, more or less, but when you're confronted yourself with humans who are right there on the screen telling you their story, you make a judgment yourself that is conclusive.
If you think about the great religions that have united large parts of humankind, people believe gods are very concrete - there is an angry old man in the sky, and if I do something wrong, he will punish me.
I literally went down to my car and thought, 'Oh my God, SAP bought Concur - maybe tomorrow they'll buy Dairy Queen.' It was the best thing that happened to me on the day I was named CEO of Oracle.
I live my life by these little church signs you see as you drive around, and there's one near me that says, 'If we really knew each other, we would neither idolise nor condemn.' And that's it: if we all knew each other, then we wouldn't treat anybody any different. And there wouldn't be any big stars, I guess.
So many people condemn me for risk taking, but I find it sort of hypocritical because everybody takes risks. Even the absence of activity could be viewed as a risk. If you sit on the sofa for your entire life, you're running a higher risk of getting heart disease and cancer.
Till 1782, I believed in the doctrine of Calvin: that is, that the majority of mankind were objects of divine condemnation and that their punishment would be everlasting. The 'Systeme de la Nature,' read about the beginning of that year, changed my opinion and made me a Deist.
I look back at my old school journals, and they're full of self-hatred, full of me condemning myself for not being prettier, richer, more popular.
I have this desire to just while away weeks, months and years. It took me two years to make this record but that was with me trying to condense my process and not disappear down the rabbit hole with all the cool things I've collected. I could take 10 years and not explore everything I want to with these instruments.
Definitely for writing, what inspires me is poetry, which I have next to me all the time because I think they're doing what I'm doing, but much harder, more condensed. It's the same job, but they're more talented. All of them. So I just steal openly from them.
My parents never condescended to me. As a child, I always sat at the head of our dinner table. I was always given a lot of responsibility.
I've never really understood that. It's a funny thing; people sometimes accuse us of condescending to our characters somehow-that to me is kind of inexplicable.
There's something about me that suggests I don't have an intelligent atom in me at all. So people say things to me that they wouldn't say to other people. Insulting, condescending things. They don't think I notice. But, of course, I'm taking it all in.
The more I worked on 'Half Brother,' the more it seemed to me the story was really about love in all its possible forms - how and why we decide to bestow it, or withdraw it; how we decide what is more worthy of being loved, and what is less. We are masters of conditional love.
At the heart of 'The Famished Road' is a philosophical conundrum - for me, an essential one: what is reality? Everybody's reality is subjective; it's conditioned by upbringing, ideas, temperament, religion, what's happened to you.
You've just got to train hard. Conditioning is key, recovery is key. As hard as you work, recovery is just as important. All the soft-tissue work daily, all the things that keep me clean. And you've always got to be aware of what you're eating, what you're putting inside your body. That's key as well.
