Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, 'Clint, you must remember, it's only a movie.'
I use every single thing that Alfred Hitchcock taught me in my acting career... I am very grateful for the education he gave me in making motion pictures.
Well, for someone who looks like me you wonder where Alfred Hitchcock is.
Algebra looked like Chinese characters to me, and I could never get into reading Shakespeare. I just did not get it.
I grew up with plenty of smart people. They would beat me at chess; they could solve brain teasers before I could, but then they would struggle in algebra. These were incredibly smart people who simply did not have the foundation in math that I had.
I still remember asking my high school guidance teacher for permission to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin. She looked down her nose at me and sneered, 'What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?'
Algeria keeps me awake at night. What about you?
My well-discussed 'paranoia' urges me to believe that some tiny segment of the NSA's parsing algorithm is finely tuned to my voice.
Once upon a time, if you were going to get a loan from me, I would have had to look at your file, and I would have to make a decision about whether youre going to get a loan. Maybe we would meet and talk about it. There would be some level of human involvement and human interaction. Now, a lot of this is determined by an algorithm.
We live in a culture that's been hijacked by the management consultant ethos. We want everything boiled down to a Power Point slide. We want metrics and 'show me the numbers.' That runs counter to the immensely complex nature of so many social, economic and political problems. You cannot devise an algorithm to fix them.
Ali's got a left, Ali's got a right - when he knocks you down, you'll sleep for the night; and when you lie on the floor and the ref counts to ten, hope and pray that you never meet me again.
Ali was a threat because he was a voice, and the people hated Ali when he was a voice, but once Ali could no longer speak and he wasn't a voice, they loved him. Love me now. I don't want to be loved if I could barely walk or barely talk. That's not cool.
I have the Midas touch, in the way that when I hook up with a project, I feel, not speaking cocky or conceited, but there's a confidence I have. I learned that from Muhammad Ali; I used to bodyguard him. He taught me about confidence. So when it comes to any job I work, I'm gonna do it good; I'm going to bring it over the top.
I'm on the record for five losses or something like that, but the one guy who really whipped me was Muhammad Ali. And it taught me one big lesson. That no matter how big and strong you are, you're going to have to use your mind. You must think things out.
I'd have to say losing the title to Ali in '74 was the lowest moment in sports for me. It was the most devastating thing in my boxing career, and it still hurts to this day.
People always ask me, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' Well, I don't have an alibi.
Morality is the least of my concerns. To me, morality in a society that - however moral its pose - is hierarchically organized is simply a lie, an alibi for the inequalities that exist in society.
In the right circumstances, I'm a big fan of eating alone. Often, on a Sunday evening, I go to a yoga class whose charm is largely that it gives me an alibi to avoid cooking family supper for once. I return to have boiled eggs and soldiers in silence with a book. Bliss.
From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans.
Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.
