How stupid do you have to be to imagine that you can turn 'The Lord Of The Rings' into a film script?
I would love to make lighter entertainments that have you sort of hopping and skipping and jumping out of the theater, but part of me just doesn't know how much I believe in that, as much as I want to.
I have no regard for that kind of ceremony. I just don't think they know what they're doing. When you see who wins those things-or who doesn't win them-you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is.
I don't worship comedy; at the end of the day, I don't fall to the altar of comedy unquestioningly.
In my vocabulary there are two bad words: art and good taste.
When people tell me I'm an artist, I say, 'What?' It's impossible for me to take the idea seriously.
Inside the museum infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo, 'This is what salvation must be like after a while.' But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.
I'm not a very spiritual guy when it comes to music. I remember hearing Carlos Santana say that angels helped him write his songs. And I thought, 'Really, angels?'
Most poetry just confounds me. I really want to like it, but I can't help thinking it's a hoax. (p. 24)
Someone has asked me to paint Biblical pictures, and I say no, I'll not paint something that we know nothing about, might just as well paint something that will happen two thousand years hence.
The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new.
Words such as truth, art, veracity, or anything are stupid in themselves.
Comedy comes easily to me, and so for me, comedy is suspect.
I became a writer because during several of the most important years of my life, writing seemed to me to be the most unreal, unattractive, and unecessary idea ever imposed upon the human race.
I sort of pride myself in my dissatisfaction with my work. I've always been concerned with buying the hype, and having that make your performances suffer.
You will never make it. ‘It’ doesn’t exist for an artist.
I am against: general ideas / the nude / the appropriation of images / the mystification of the untitled / the glorification of artistic doubt / the fuzzy edges of sensitivity / old sins / and useless guilt.
