“There’s no question that Whale’s movies are classics. They were wonderful, and successful.”

I’m a horrible public speaker.

The thing I’ve noticed about life is that it just keeps coming at you. And it can be a real bummer. What you need to remember is that you’re not alone.

You know he comes out of stand-up. He comes – it’s all about capturing the moment – in the moment, you know.

In Hollywood through the 50s, there were black, English, and Middle European housekeepers and maids.

Kinsey was six foot five, and he had this leader of men quality.

We’re still pushing it, you know. It is weird. Suddenly you wake up and it’s like, ‘God, five years have gone by.

Kinsey thought that Freud in his own way was as dangerous as the Catholic Church.

Our relationships, relationships between adults, how all those pieces fit together – that’s the most complicated thing we all face.

So I never thought of anything as making fun of it, but kind of reveling in the melodrama of it. It’s a melodrama.

It’s in the nature of television to restrain the spontaneity of a live event. Things become more and more prepackaged.

Kinsey would identify himself with Galileo in moments of feelings of persecution.

But the imposition of morality onto science, – where it does not belong – has become rampant in recent years.

But you really – I always think that a director has got to adapt to whatever the needs of the actor are. You know, so if you take someone like Eddie Murphy, who is not a big fan of rehearsal.

That day I think we really saw each other for the first time. I mean, saw beyond the bag of bones on the outside. You take away her pretty and my plain and what you get underneath is about the same: a couple of lost girls looking to be found.

I do think that’s so much a part of what being a director is – in working with actors – to really try and be sensitive to what each actor needs to get to where he wants to be.

I had a couple of movies that I was passionately involved with that I could never get made. ‘Richard Pryor,’ I wrote for – gosh – over a year. That was close to getting made for two-and-a-half years after that.

We’re highly social animals – I’m told by scientists that what makes us different from other animals is an acute social awareness, which is what has made us so successful.

It’s much easier to follow something that’s not been as successful as this.

One of the most heinous, insidious lies is the notion that you have to be an asshole to be a successful business person.

If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.

In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.

Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to offspring.