The selection of a book-plate is such a serious matter.
Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.
Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.
A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.
Freedom has always been an expensive thing. History is fit testimony to the fact that freedom is rarely gained without sacrifice and self-denial.
I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and the root of the problem. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems we face as a race.
Women think in [Douglas] Sirk’s films. Something which has never struck me with other directors. None of them. Usually women are always reacting, doing what women are supposed to do, but in Sirk they think. It’s something that has to be seen. It’s great to see women think. It gives one hope. Honestly.
I see myself as a comic but the acting helps sell tickets for gigs.
The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.
John Lee Hooker became a friend of mine and I love all of his work. He was truly an icon. He lived the life. I miss him.