You can't come away with this cosmic perspective thinking that you are better than others and want to fight. That's why you'll never have astrophysicists leading nations into war.
I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.
I can have my day carefully planned, but if someone wakes up with a cough or a sniffle, then everything changes. Thinking quickly and adapting without grumbling are essential skills to learn, in my opinion.
I am not a big fan of positive thinking. The term suggests that there is something negative that you have to counteract by being positive. That is an artificial duality.
I used to think like Moses. That knocked me down for a couple years and put me in prison. Then I start thinking like Job. Job waited and became the wealthiest and richest man ever 'cause he believed in God.
Reducing carbon emissions is important, but it is shortsighted if not coupled with reducing the toxic emissions from our heart; and that is something spiritual leaders are supposed to teach and something all thinking people, regardless of their beliefs, should practice.
I remember in high school thinking that I wanted to be a lawyer, and now I realize I saw that movie 'And Justice for All' when I was a kid and thought, 'That's what lawyers do, and I want to get up and yell and scream in the middle of a courtroom.'
I know how I like my house. I like it cute and cozy and a little funky, and I like it to feel lived in and worn, and I like the things inside of it to work. That's all. And for me, it's fine that my house's interior suggests that I might not spend every waking moment thinking about how it looks.
To my way of thinking, an actor's course is set even before he's out of the cradle.
You can't really think about more than one movie at a time. You're thinking about it consciously, and the subconscious is working too, and if you cram too much into your head, you don't get any ideas in the shower.
In kindergarten, we had this Irish Catholic headmistress called Sister Leonie, and I remember she would tell us, say, to put the crayons in the box. I remember thinking, 'Why is everyone finding this so easy? Why should the crayons be in the box?'
We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think religion stops people from thinking. I think it justified crazies.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Climate change denial, anti-vaccination proponents, creationist teachers, faith healers, fake bomb detector peddlers, psychic frauds, alternative medicine pushers... we need scientific thinking. We need a generation of kids who think an experiment is more important than a preconceived notion or an argument from authority.
Reminding myself that listening is just as important a creative act as thinking is key for me.
Which is why, in my lieder concerts, I always strove, when possible, to sing only the works of a single composer, so that the audience could be gradually drawn into a particular creative genius' way of thinking, and could follow him.
My idea in terms of managing a narrative, or in thinking in my creative life, is that you could easily argue that the past, the present and the future all occur simultaneously, and if you can postulate that, then you're not strictly bound to a linear narrative.
Yesterday I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things.
When you're a creative person, there are just times when you're not listening. You know, I could be looking right at you and thinking about something else.
My hand is the extension of the thinking process - the creative process.
