By temperament and disposition and emotions, I'm a liberal; but in my beliefs about what's best for the country, I'm a centrist.
There was a rock in front of my hut, a tall, gray rock. By its looks it seemed to be well-disposed toward me.
I'm not really a happy person. It's a question of temperament. I have a tendency toward melancholy. You can feel quite happily melancholic.
Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.
When I do look at myself, I see someone who is fundamentally optimistic. Quite a lot of what I do in my television work involves the less than pleasant aspects of human nature, yet I'm never pessimistic.
He [Aristotle] pointed out that people who had become initiates in the various mystery religions were not required to learn any facts 'but to experience certain emotions and to be put in a certain disposition.' Hence his famous literary theory that tragedy effected a purification (katharsis) of the emotions of terror and pity that amounted to an experience of rebirth.
I'm a kind person; I don't have a really nihilist streak in me, but I respond to that kind of humour.
I'm usually an excruciatingly happy person.
I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.
I even think that, sentimentally, I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune.
