Until I read Anne Frank's diary, I had found books a literal escape from what could be the harsh reality around me. After I read the diary, I had a fresh way of viewing the both literature and the world. From then on, I found I was impatient with books that were not honest or that were trivial and frivolous.
The harsh reality is that we simply cannot tax our way out of our overspending and debt problem. We need a balanced approach that includes both a stronger economy to generate new tax revenues and bipartisan guardrails, which will help ensure that future presidents and congresses spend within our means.
The harsh reality is this: to have influence in the world, you need to be willing and able to reward your friends and punish your enemies.
There's a bit more of a safe distance when you're making a narrative movie, a bit more perspective. Audiences can separate themselves from the harsh reality of the facts a little bit more and think: 'Okay, how do I consider this?'
Mixing humour and harsh reality is a very human behaviour, it's the way people stay sane in their daily lives.
Hurricane Katrina exposed the harsh reality that we have been skating on thin ice when it comes to this country's energy concentrations on the Gulf Coast.
I was affected by the harshness of government, the reality of 16-hour days, and the pressures of modern communications.
'Meek's Cutoff' by Kelly Reichardt - it's beautifully shot. It's a complex story. The filmmaker gave a very patient and feminine touch to a story that takes place during a period of history that's very masculine, without losing any of the unforgiving harshness of the reality where the characters found themselves in.
If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it - by the non-reality - you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you.
We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.
The subject and the reality of having children came at the height of my career.
Television brings with it two dangerous hazards: the worship of celebrity and the blurring of reality and fantasy.
America, to me, is this enormous contrast between the heady idealism of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who said, 'All men are created equal,' and the reality that he was himself a slave owner.
I like the realism of anti-heroes. It's a healthy thing. I think heroes can be very unhealthy at times because it doesn't connect you to reality.
I was a little hesitant to do 'Love & Hip-Hop' because sometimes reality TV can be good for your music career and sometimes bad.
I believe that the fact and the reality of homosexuality and heterosexuality and of opposite and same-gender unions should be taught in our public schools without a value judgement system also being offered.
What I believe about race is that race is not real. It's not a biological reality. It's a hierarchical system that was created to leverage power and privilege between different groups of people.
I kind of grew up with high goals for myself; I intended to play pro baseball. Growing up in Texas, Hollywood isn't much of a reality.
Using taxes to punish the rich, in reality, punishes everyone because we are all interconnected. High taxes and excessive regulation and massive debt are not working.
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
