Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
If I were a first rate writer, I wouldn't mind a bit. What does depress me is this: it is so desperately hard and so obsessive and so lonely to write that, in return for all this work, one would like a little self satisfaction. And that is never going to come, for the simple reason that I do not deserve it. I cannot be a good enough writer. You see? I call it grim. But the future looks awfully clear to me.
My efforts with Hollywood are like things written in water.
Sadly, as with so much about history's heroes, it's the spotting of potential fame that's the difficulty, whether it's publishing their poems, hanging their paintings, or buying their old underwear. Think of the great men whose lives passed in penury and hacking coughs due to public unawareness that their littlest possession would end up at Sothebys or the basement at Fort Knox.
All of the sudden people say, "She's got tits and legs and blond hair. Let's talk to her!" I've been paying dues for years in modeling. Not only that, it took a month and a half of Chuck Russell, The Mask's director, and Jim Carrey trying to get New Line to say O.K. on me. I didn't sleep; I had an ulcer. Of course, when people talk of paying their dues, they mean years of going to acting school and auditionin.
This was a "bad" example for U.S. slaves. Haiti was subjected to an embargo from the United States, which, along with many other countries, refused to recognize this new republic.
In Hollywood, maybe only ten percent will make it and the other ninety percent try. This elusive dream of making it and being on top is the same story as the moth being drawn to the flame. The flame and it's attractiveness is something you'll never eliminate. Some will learn how to live in that environment and others will burn in it.
The ones that make it complicated never get congratulated
It is hard to grow up in a society in which one's important problems are treated as nonexistent. It is impossible to belong to it, it is hard to fight to change it.
The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
I spent 30 years of my life not being wanted at all for films.
Hemingway describes literary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other.
My work was not embraced for many decades. I would have killed myself if getting embraced affected me so much.
When I made my student film, a feature, nobody wanted to talk to me and I was, like, in the desert for 12 years.
I confess my belief in the common man.... The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.... The man who is in the melee knows what blows are being struck and what blood is being drawn.
He saw mankind going through life in a childlike manner... which he loved but also despised.... He saw them toiling, saw them suffering, and becoming gray for the sake of things which seemed to him to be entirely unworthy of this price, for money, for little pleasures, for being slightly honoured.
I look for a thematic idea running through my movies and I see that it's the outsider struggling for recognition. I realize that all my life I've been an outsider, and above all, being lonely but never realizing it.
I don't think anybody chooses to be an underdog.
But, it's because we have a harder way to succeed in life as Serbs because of the past that we had and because of the history that we had. We have to dig deeper and we have to do much more in order to be seen and to be spotted.
The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old.
A soul isn't given for free. The races of men fight each other to the death for the honor of being recognized as human beings, with souls.
You're making these movies for pennies, there's absolutely nothing to offer anybody, and they will still fight you! "There's no more back-end for him? Well he'll have your back-end! He'll take your first born child!" Producing is totally exhausting.
I wish I could say differently, but I really don't think so. There are too many musicians already for probably anyone to be noticed without some sort of commercial support. Even the most talented ones drown in a sea of mediocrity, and only the politically correct ones will ever be promoted (willingly...) by the press anyhow.
My accomplishments do not live up to my tennis game. Most people have to work really hard and win some big matches, and then they get money and popularity. For me it has been the reverse of everybody else. The exact opposite.
It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master
