The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision.
I have always had a tendency to keep enlarging problems which I personally think is the way the world works... that seeing anything one dimensionally on the kinds of political, sort of big issues of human progress is going to be a distorted view of things, which is why over my career I have gone seemingly from subject to subject to subject.
When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.
I think the Enlightenment is leading us into a dark hole, really.
I think I enlist comedy to a serious purpose.
To make independent films, you can't think about them too much, ponder on them too much, get overwhelmed by the enormity of it.
Anytime you take someone's money, that puts enormous pressure. But I think if you want the most reward, you have to take the most risk.
When I started acting, I didn't think of it as a career. I always thought Hollywood was this magical world where a fairy came down and said, 'Come live with the Munchkins; you are now one of us.' I didn't understand the concept of it as a career. I thought I would save up enough money to go to college.
I think one of the things about Donald Trump that's interesting is he lives in a rarified atmosphere where it's possible that he doesn't get enough feedback, enough people rolling their eyes at him. It's a danger more in show business than it is with wealth.
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
I don't think we spend enough time in silence, just realizing what's floating around in our noggin.
I went to one doctor who told me I wasn't exercising enough. I was so exhausted, I couldn't raise my arm. When this doctor called it psychosomatic, I was enraged. To think the constant sore throat and swollen glands were all in my head was infuriating.
I do ask myself why I make people so enraged, because I only ever say what I think. And while I know it might not be everyone's point of view, that doesn't seem particularly intolerable to me.
This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.
Every high school and college graduate in America should, I think, have some familiarity with statistics, economics and a foreign language such as Spanish. Religion may not be as indispensable, but the humanities should be a part of our repertory. They may not enrich our wallets, but they do enrich our lives. They civilize us. They provide context.
I believe that two people can meet and enrich each other's lives. I'd say that about my parents. But I think it is harder and harder to commit to only one person in a lifetime.
I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.
What artists think about the world is often different from how we businessmen see it, and I find that an enriching experience.
I don't think that the world would be a better place if everyone owned a dog, and I don't think that all relationships between dogs and their owners are good, healthy, or enriching.
I think we ultimately ought to look to put all uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing, if any is done, under multinational control. Those are the two technologies by which nuclear energy can be translated into nuclear weapons programmes.
