Quotes About Evolution

'Writing' is the wrong way to describe what happens to words in a movie. First, you put down words. Then you rehearse them with actors. Then you shoot the words. Then you edit them. You cut a lot of them, you fudge them, you make up new ones in voice-over. Then you cut it and throw it all away.

There have been scenes and sequences I've done that I watch back now and cringe and think I dealt with that in completely the wrong way. Sometimes I'm too emotional - too invested, in that sense - but you learn, and then you don't do it again.

God - God's the wrong word - goddess or nature will conspire to transform you in a way you couldn't have imagined.

The reason I keep making movies is I hate the last thing I did. I'm trying to rectify my wrongs.

My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.

For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.

I didn't pretend that I was good at writing music, so I wrote terrible music, intentionally. As time went on, the terrible subsided, and I started getting good.

What's changed is we now have good anatomical, geological, archaeological evidence that Neanderthals are not our ancestors. When I wrote 'Lucy,' I considered Neanderthals ancestors of modern humans. We have gone back twice the age of Lucy, six million years. And we see that upright bipedal walking goes back that far in time.

The first song that I wrote that I was proud of was probably 'Hunter' from the first record. But I listen that now and I don't know. I mean, it's got a good hook, but still. I'm proud of it. I'm as proud as I can be of all the ideas, but I think 'Party' showed a maturity that I don't think I had on 'Aldous Harding.'

I wrote this book, '2030,' and I was careful in the book not to overdo the future because I don't think it comes that fast.

I once wrote that anybody who believes the world is only 6,000 years old is either ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.

Filmmakers and critics wrote about each other and sometimes very harshly. This no longer exists.

I see my life flashing before me when I see people in the audience singing along to something I wrote in the '80s, and they're maybe standing next to someone who knows the more recent stuff.

I was 23 when I wrote 'Neighbors,' and I definitely look back at it now and cringe a little bit. I was trying to understand what drama was.

The only joy I had was writing what was. That book was. It no longer amuses me to be all the things I was when I wrote that. But it is my story as I was then.

I had a studio visitor ask me when a piece was complete, and afterward, I realized I was kind of annoyed by the question. I wrote down to myself, 'Nothing's ever finished' as an operating value.

One second here and there will make all the difference between something being funny and not being funny. That's why I like going, 'Well, we wrote that six months ago, and it was funny one time we read it, but it's not funny anymore. So what? Just dump it.'

You made a lot of mistakes, and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process.

I first wrote about Michael Jackson in the 1980s. His skin was growing paler, his features thinner, and his aura more feminine. Some called him a traitor to his race. Some fussed about his gender fluidity. I saw him as a post-modern shape-shifter. But the shifts grew more extreme and mysterious.

The publishers, as I remember at the very beginning of my career, wrote letters with their fountain pens. A letter is different from a phone call or fax. It's a different kind of intimacy. That pervaded the entire business of writing and publishing.

I loved the last album, and it was one hundred percent me. But this is like me two years later, who understands a little bit more about music and understands a little bit more about making an album. I wrote a lot more.

I can look back at stuff I wrote in my early days and squirm at some of the mistakes I made. But we're all learning every day; we never stop. I just hope people keep on liking what I do. That gives me such a kick.

Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.

The deeper changes wrought by the end of a particular outlaw culture: something will come of that ... and it won't be what we expect.