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.
The politicians are not the only people who are in their own silos. Many of our citizens only watch or listen to the news that they want to hear, and if there is anything else, they turn it off. We all need to listen to the people who are on the other side.
Denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
The White House seems to be a sound-proof booth.
American politics can produce great men and women, but it is profoundly insular.
The art world has become so insular. The rules have become so autodidactic that, in a sense, they lose track of what people have any interest in thinking about, talking about, or even looking at.
I was in the tennis bubble. I wasn't thinking about the big picture. I didn't notice what they said on television, I wasn't reading any papers. I had a coach and a manager, and they kept me in the bubble.
There's something awful about Oxford, I think. It's such a little ghetto.
The fact is the human race is not only slow about borrowing valuable ideas--it sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
There's no doubt in my mind that people on the West Coast - L.A. particularly - and the East Coast have no clue at all about what's happening outside their own little bailiwick. And they think everybody is stupid because they are not sophisticated.
Wretched Castile, yesterday the ruler wrapped in rags and scorning all it does not know.
Loneliness is not a problem in traditional societies. People spend their lives in or near the place where they were born, and they remain surrounded by relatives and childhood companions.
My thing with New York was that it felt so insular. When I went to L.A., everybody I knew was a cool, amazing musician. In New York, they'd be hunkered down trying to form a band. But in L.A., guys in bands were also playing with other artists, touring with other artists, and collaborating with other artists.
There are no countries in the world less known by the British than those selfsame British Islands.
Making America great again, as if to keep the world out. The world and all its fresh ideas and everything that's new and exhilarating and the wind of change that should blow through the world - block it out, wall ourselves up. That for me goes with a small vocabulary. A narrow, confining vocabulary.
And what should they know of England who only England know?
When George W. Bush hit the campaign trail in 2000, the precious possession he brought with him from home was his personal feather pillow. The theme of the Bush years was obliviousness. He was famously unavailable for debate and dialogue. He was deaf to countervailing voices. He hit the sack early and always got a good night's sleep.
When you got on the private plane, you had your own private lounge where you could close the door. So there wasn't a lot of friendly conversation; we were in incubators by ourselves. That just bred a void - avoid each other, and avoid the issues.
I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn't one's lover.
The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.
Being from Chicago, you kind of are shielded in a way from the other stuff that goes on in music and the industry.
You can meet lots of actors who are in their own world and do their own thing, and they have no idea what's going on and they don't know anyone's name around them.
When people are not sure about their future, when their economies are suffering, when their personal fortunes are flagging, we have often in this country turned to nativism and xenophobia and racism and anti-immigrant sensibilities and passions to express our sense of outrage at what we can't control - and to forge a kind of fitful solidarity that turns out to be rather insular - we look inward and not outward.
What I always meant by that was that I do believe that a lot of directors, and writers, and sometimes producers just lose their edge because they haven't seen anybody or talked to anybody or been with anybody who isn't a kind of replica of themselves for a long period of time.
My understanding is that it's quite difficult for actors in the theater to know anybody but actors in the theater. It's the whole concept of the amniotic fluid surrounding one industry, holding people in place. I've never had a season ticket. I'm always a tourist.
