We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail.

Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits.

Bob Dylan continues to release odd and unsettling records, and to do odd and unsettling things on stage. So the term 'still' seems meaningless to me. But the real answer is simple: I listen to Bob Dylan for pleasure more than I listen to anyone else for pleasure.

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.

I learned that when something just has to be said to move the discussion along, or broaden it or deepen it, if I can just keep my mouth shut for five minutes a student will say it. So for me a lot of teaching is about keeping my mouth shut.

I never find myself even catching lyrics until something in the sound has taken me captive. Thinking about anything else is just the pleasurable byproduct of wow.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.'

If 'Mystery Train' is my Nixon book and 'Lipstick Traces' my Reagan book, 'Invisible Republic' is my Bill Clinton book. I really liked Clinton. He made me proud to be part of this country again. For all of his failings, the way he put all that he'd done in jeopardy, I supported him from beginning to end.

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

The Sixties are most generously described as a time when people took part - when they stepped out of themselves and acted in public, as people who didn't know what would happen next, but who were sure that acts of true risk and fear would produce something different from what they had been raised to take for granted.

You're going to react to a painting in a way that the painting demands you react.

Punk to me was a form of free speech. It was a moment when suddenly all kinds of strange voices that no reasonable person could ever have expected to hear in public were being heard all over the place.

We're gonna try and bring on all the different aspects of horror movie making and bring on guests and show all these old '50's B movies. Not the real corny ones, the real cool ones.

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

If we're not on them, they go back to their old ways.

If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

In those days, when you got boxed, that was it. A lot of old people were there because somebody wanted the farm. It was about property. People are treated like property.

I think people feel starved of nice, glamorous entertainment. They want to see costumes and gaiety and a singer; old-fashioned entertainment - it won't die easily.

Not that I wouldn't have been equally happy to see the old buddies and see it all start up again that way. But this was more of a work situation, and a very good one.

Yippee! I can't believe I made it. It feels like a long haul to get here. I'm so fine with it. People want you to have some sort of breakdown, but I'm relieved to be 40 years old, and I've lived a life.

There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on - the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part.

I was on TV for almost sixteen weeks during American Idol. It's at the point now where it's old.

I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all.

I like to take pictures of lots of things: people-such as my nephews, my dogs, and just interesting objects that I see. For instance, I might take a picture of flowers by the side of the road, an old sign or a fence.

I was in the game for love. After all, where else can an old-timer with one leg, who can't hear or see, live like a king while doing the only thing I wanted to do?

So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history.

For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what God can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

I would not be gotten into a schoolhouse until I was eight years old. Nor did I accomplish much after I started. I doubt if I had gone to school six months in all when my father died. I was fourteen at the time.

Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.

My life would have been different without Paul Stanley or Ace Frehley. They would have to be the greatest on my list as an influence to my life at 11 years old.

I was 48-years old before anybody talked me into it for medicinal purposes, instead of some of these drugs that they give you that will lead you to heart surgery and things of that nature.

These old ballparks are like cathedrals in America. We don't have big old Gothic cathedrals like they do in Europe. But we got baseball parks.

I just have some restaurants to just go and eat there. Do mean places to watch people? I like to go shopping look for guitars and stuff with my friends. Look at Meyer, great old instruments, talk about pedals and stuff.

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I - if I'm not interested in something, I don't grasp it.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

Medicines are only fit for old people.

That other saying, I'm a part of all that I have met, I think that would have to begin with my wonderful parents back in Atlanta when I was a youngster five years old I was tongue tied.

Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started.