Literature Interviews

“I’m surviving. I do everything I can to speak out and make sure that I keep my humanity.”

“If I should be fortunate enough to make another film, it would be exactly what I have settled upon as what is right for me. I feel that these days, I understand a little more what the cinema is.”

“When I was younger I used to have more anxiousness to obtain things. But there are moments in which you obtain those things and then you relax.”

“I can’t make people happy if I’m not happy myself. That applies to anyone who tries to achieve something in their life: if you’re not happy, you can’t transfer any happiness”

“I am not that interested at the moment to work for the sake of others, I’m not interested in doing commissions. I'm way more interested in creating art for art's sake and in order to do that I have to believe in myself.”

“I think that one should make a house that really fits you like your second soul. It should be your most preferred place on earth!”

“My goal when I’m in front of an audience is to perform the piece and fill it with meaning. On stage, I concentrate on rationality and empathy, since the singer must feel a certain amount of emotion, but not too much.”

“I think a big part of writing comes out of an attempt to understand yourself. I just always felt whole when I was writing. I felt this kind of beautiful privacy that I never felt in any other way.”

“Although sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don’t want to just retire. No, I enjoy it all and you just keep going until the day comes when you can’t do it anymore.”

“I’ve been very fortunate, and I don’t know why, but my shoes don’t have a special time period. I don’t design them with that in mind but it happens: timelessness. I have been absolutely gifted by that.”

“I want to be an authentic person. I start to feel that it’s a mission. I am not going to hold back on an opinion I have about something; I don’t know what the point of that would be.”

“It’s the rollercoaster ride of doing something creative: when it goes well and you enjoy the process then it’s a high and you just want to keep on doing it.”

“I think at a certain point, you arrive to a kind of maturity that allows you to swim more freely. And when you touch that state, playing with your unconscious, it's very beautiful when you when you experience that moment.”

“After winning an Oscar, there’s an alertness to what you’re thinking or doing or saying. I feel like there’s an aliveness to the experience that wasn’t as attuned previously.”

“Most people make art and movies as a job and if a lot of people go to see it they make money and that is their sign of success. I am not making judgment here, but their goal is strictly business-oriented. I don't do this as a business.”

“I’m 80 years old now, and little by little over your lifetime you begin to understand things that you didn’t understand earlier.”

“When you keep yourself open, you just might get to know yourself and know the good things about yourself. And that's why I always come back to songwriting. It's the way I kind of try and make sense of my life.”

“I’ve learned not to look at sales reports. I used to, but if I had listened to sales reports at the beginning, I would have given up on things that are some of our biggest successes now.”

“I struggled a lot. That was the reason I became a champion. A lot of people give up, a lot of people feel sorry for themselves. But I didn't.”

“I think we've all lived through the pandemic and it has awakened in all of us a concept of time, and how fleeting our time is and can be... I want to apply my energy doing good and creating and hopefully not squandering that. That's what I live for.”

“I remember driving in New York in 1976 and I put the brakes on quickly because there was the very, very first Vogue cover that I ever shot. Big, on a bus shelter! And I remember just pulling over and just staring at it. At that point it was a real dream to see one of your pictures there. I’d always dreamed of doing a Vogue cover!”

“We’re going after it. We’re going after what we believe and what we deserve and we’re not taking the back seat anymore. I see an improvement in the way that we as women are standing together and paving the way for the next generations. It’s time for that.”

“We have such a short time on this earth, and when you give that opportunity to somebody younger, and they pass it on to the next generation… That’s real success.”

“What I am looking for in this world is a sense of not feeling alone, and that’s one of the greatest gifts you can give to another person. I hope that my work does that. I hope that when people leave the theater they feel less alone.”

“I thought for a long time as the business grew, “Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life?” And I knew it was not. When I left Calvin Klein, I had done almost everything I wanted to do in terms of creation of products. And re-doing was less fun.”

“I don’t want to continue to do what I did when I was 20. I would like to continue to develop myself .”

“There's going to be a moment where your work challenges you, where you’re at your limit… But if that deep love is really there, you're not going to abandon it. You are going to give your all to it!”

“I feel like the best art comes from a sense of necessity and urgency, like I can't help but talk about this.”

“when we finally put a piece together for the first time, seeing it all together, when it actually works… The excitement in the room is something I’ll never forget. It feels like a very powerful moment to be part of.”

“You don’t think of your roles as achievements. You think of the roles you play, the paintings you’ve made. I mean, imagine an actor saying, “I don’t want to go on anymore because I can’t do better than the last movie I made. I might as well quit now.” We’d call that resting on your laurels.”

“There’s only one of you in the world. No one else is like you and that's a superpower.”

“I do not consider architecture as art, nor do I consider architects to be artists. However, I do have a strong desire to improve the purity of my expression and put a strong message into my architecture so that I can call it art!”

“To have those magical moments, the ones that require real trust or bravery or letting go, you’ve really gotta swing for the rafters! You’ve got to try and hit it out the park — although you might miss. You’re always trying to hit it into the rafters, and damn the consequences if you don’t make it.”

“The success of translating an idea into action is very often where the talent is to be found. If you can give a body to the idea, I think you are onto a very interesting process.”

“The guys who are real artists are people who have figured out the art of living; their art is art because they live. They have made living an art, they have made an art of living. They are constantly inputting life as opposed to expressing life.”

“Filmmaking is never anything less than a beautiful gift. I've been doing this forever, and as hard as it may be, it's never let me down. I have such a will to make these movies!”

“It’s still astounding to me that I have one Oscar, let alone two. Especially because it’s by-product of something that you love so much, it feels like that’s already the gift, that’s already the award.”

“Somehow at the end of the day doing something that actually resonates with people is quite rewarding and keeps me going.”

“When you are in a very, very tough moment of a day and have a lot of frustration because nothing is happening right—but you don’t give up—and suddenly that happens! That’s almost a transcendental thing.”

“I started a very nice career, became quite successful, and at age 40 I won this prize. But when I got that prize, I realized that I hadn’t yet found my own language of cooking. So I got on my knees and gathered all the tools from my childhood and started working very hard on that. And that’s how it started.”