If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. . . then beat 'em.
Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.
With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.
The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
The camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart.
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival.
Great pain, when it is honored from the heart, opens into great understanding.
I never looked at fan mail, for some reason. My mother and grandmother handled my mail - although it's not like I was ever in the stratosphere of Kirk Cameron or Scott Baio.
I lived in Hollywood long enough to learn to play tennis and become a star, but I never felt it was my home.