There are certain pursuits which if not wholly poetic and true do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees for instance.

Distance doesn't exist in fact and neither does time. Vibrations from love or music can be felt everywhere at all times.

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no like 'I'll be the rock star you be the adulating fan.'

For instance I'm always fascinated to see whether given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright for instance will no longer exist in 10 years.

I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime for instance.

The kind of pace that you want to use in a Western - just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel and the way things develop sort of slowly - it's almost the antithetical of what's currently going on in the movies you know.

There are movies that require fantasy and slightly more fantastical acting. Lines that are good for certain movies in real life circumstances would be absolutely unbelievable things to really say and you would look at these people like they're freaks for conversing that way. But somehow for certain styles of movies it works and it seems fine.

It's like why people read scary books or go see scary movies. Because it creates a distance. They're scared but they're not going to get hurt.

I think a lot of people do big movies not because they are talented artists but because they can function in the circumstances.

I had someone call me this morning telling me they had somebody who would only work a certain number of hours a week because if they worked too many hours a week then they couldn't get their government assistance. And that person has multiple cell phones and gets them new every month with new minutes.

We were doing it under the most extraordinary circumstances but the first out of the tent in the morning would be David Lean. He said to me on the very first day of shooting Pete this is the beginning of a great adventure.

I had no idea that I would ever get involved with something like lending money to poor people given the circumstances in which I was working in Bangladesh.

Man is not the creature of circumstances circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents and man is more powerful than matter.

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances but are unwilling to improve themselves they therefore remain bound.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Circumstances rule men men do not rule circumstances.

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults except in abnormal circumstances such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

A pregnant woman facing the most dire circumstances must be able to count on her doctor to do what is medically necessary to protect her from serious physical harm.

The sum and substance of female education in America as in England is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life and to pretend that they do not think so.

I think it's unfortunate that there exists only one path in America to complete social legitimacy and that is marriage. I think for instance that it would be far easier for Americans to elect a black president or a female president than an unmarried president.

Children are supposed to help hold a marriage together. They do this in a number of ways. For instance they demand so much attention that a husband and wife concentrating on their children fail to notice each other's faults.

I really love idiot enlightened characters - these characters who fail to engage with the drama of their immediate circumstances they fail to be reactive and enrolled by drama as it happens around them.

Love knows not distance it hath no continent its eyes are for the stars.