Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That’s a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.
No single person who has ever lived will be able to tell you what happens. Period. Nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong.
I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren’t neutral.
I think a lot of people in Washington are extremely suspicious of NASA.
My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That’s probably the most pretentious thing I’ve said.
The main thing that attracts me to Buddhism is probably what attracts every artist to being an artist – that it’s a godlike thing. You are the ultimate authority. There is no other ultimate authority.
The problem with prototypes is they don’t always work.
I don’t care about being famous or having a lot of people go, “She’s really good.”
That’s really a very different experience: You don’t have to look to be understood. You’re already understood.
I’m thrilled by the fact that I made something out of nothing. There it is! It wasn’t there before: there it is – I made it! That’s pretty powerful, and that’s the power that Buddhists give to every single person.
When you follow your thoughts and watch them attach to certain things, it makes certain things real and other things unreal, and you realize that this is all created by your mind.
I know a lot of people who have weird specialties that are not taught in schools; they’re things that you learn in life.
There are plenty of ways you can play the game of fighting and really seem to be fighting without going for the jugular.
I really trust audiences as having excellent taste, for the most part.
I wanted to stay hooked because it was the first time I’ve been part of the tradition where forgetting was just fine. You do it, you try, you forget, you fail.
I’m actually not someone who believes in heaven or anything like that.
I didn’t really understand that Vipassana is a relatively new form of Buddhism that was based on the storage of pain. So the idea is that every time you don’t scream, that’s your Buddhist side.
The right to carry a gun has nothing to do with the rights of other people.
I realized why movie scores are mostly strings, because it really frees your eyes to look around.
Dogs don’t just like us, they love us, and they admire us. The big reason they admire us is we invented cars. They’re like, “Yes, we get to go somewhere!” Go somewhere faster, with their head out the window, and their ears, like, “Yes! Yes!”
It’s a little hard to speak when you’re not supposed to move.