Victory is plesant, not only to those who love to conquer, bot to all; for there is produced an idea of superiority, which all with more or less eagerness desire.
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
Writing the record for me - every record is almost a surprise. When people ask me, what are the themes you want to grapple with on this one? I have no idea until the record's finished.
After me, the Revolution - or, rather the ideas which formed it - will resume their course. It will be like a book from which the marker is removed, and one starts to read again at the page where one left off.
In most constitutional states the citizens rule and are ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that the natures of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at all.
Making music videos, I try to bring musicians into the logistics of filmmaking, and I try to preserve whatever's of value and achievable in their idea. If it's something I can't achieve, I tell them straight. You want to make sure that the artist really loves the idea and is committed to it, otherwise they're not going to feel great when they're up there miming it.
When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with. My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something. It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.
I think of a plot, I think of an idea, and then I wonder, How can I get that onto the stage? . . . Whatever devices you use should always be there to serve the theme. If the theme has been overtaken by the device, then something's wrong.
The idea of overcoming is always fascinating to me. It's fascinating because few of us realize how much energy we have expended just to be here today. I don't think we give ourselves enough credit for the overcoming.
When you rest in quietness and your image of yourself fades, and your image of the world fades, and your ideas of others fade, what's left? A brightness, a radiant emptiness that is simply what you are.