The thing that you're faulted on today is not that you are too tough, or not that you aren't careful. It's that you might have been too soft. People want that red meat now because you have to keep up with the mood and the mood today is harsh. It really is.
The closer you stay to emotional authenticity and people, character authenticity, the less you can go wrong. That's how I feel now, no matter what you're doing.
With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.
I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.
This is what happens when you are on the wrong side of 40. Young adults, who could be your children, are now working with you. I was playing their parents or mentor. I started to think: Oh, I am not part of that group any more.
For a while, people couldn't understand why I'd find them so fascinating, but I'd rather go to a trial than to a Broadway play. Now that we have Court TV, they see what I mean.
