I had no ambition when I was a kid other than to play guitar and get in a rock 'n' roll band. I don't really like to be the guy in the white suit at the front. Like in the Beatles, I was the one who kept quiet at the back and let the other egos be at the front.
I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.
I went to my old school, where all the kids I'd been with for eight years were about to graduate. But the sisters wanted me to repeat the whole term; so I went to the principal and pleaded with her to allow me to graduate with my class. She finally agreed on the condition that I write the graduation play. It was called How Do You Spend Your Leisure Time?Catchy title, huh?
Grass [marijuana] probably helped me as much as it hurt me. Especially as a performer. When you're high, it's easy to kid yourself about how clever certain mediocre pieces of material are. But, on the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way.
I did go to school - my kind of school. When I was a kid I went out ... and you meet people. You talk to them. Anybody says something that makes sense, it stays with you, rubs off on you. That kind of school.
I was possessing heroin in fairly large quantities in New York City during the years of the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. Had I been busted, I would have faced mandatory life in prison. I don't think many white kids walked, either. I knew one who got 15 years for pot.
I was just different. When the other kids gravitated to football or basketball I went fishing and skating. I was into trapping animals, pheasants and squirrels. Not only was I trapper. I was a taxidermist.
If you fight for a living you can't give a damn about the opponent because they're trying to take food out of your mouth and your kids' mouths. You're in competition with everybody. The trick is, just don't let them know you're competing against them.
The toughest thing about raising kids is convincing them that you have seniority.
We are in effect enculturating kids from the very beginning to see women and girls as not taking up half of the space.
At 23 it was all about acting. Today it's getting my kids to school, making sure that they've done their homework. I'm in my fifties, and I'm turning into a square.
As a kid I was made to walk the plank. We couldn't afford a dog.
I'm happy that I've raised six kids, and not one of them is a Ph.D.
If you're outside the path of totality eclipse, if there's any way you can get into the path of totality for the eclipse, do it. Take the day off. Take the kids out of school. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most people to see a total eclipse, and it is one of the grandest sights in all of nature. It's something you'll always remember, and you'll pass stories of it onto your grandchildren.
When I was a kid, my father didn't really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer; he didn't think I would amount to anything. My mother also.
Every western I did and will do; I will do it for the never ending young kid inside of me.
I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school.
I was a very lucky kid, because I grew up affluent Santa Barbara, California. My experience as a child was probably so different from people I met later who grew up in the rural South, where many doors were closed to them.
I grew up as a kid being able to attend concerts, go to art museums. Santa Barbara was a rich cultural community, and I had access to everything. I think that shaped me as an artist.
I seemed so different from other kids; I grew up in church and felt a connection with God, and a lot of kids my age really didn't understand that.
The minute you walk through the door and your kid runs into your arms, you're smacked in the face with a dose of reality: It's like, this is my real life.
One thing I think kids need to do is more chores, and take care of their own rooms. Responsibilities are really important to start them with. If they have animals, they have to feed them and care for them. That's the only way I think I could do it.
I don't have time to sit up and write songs all day. Maybe one day when my kids get older.
When you start directing movies at the age of 24, you're just a kid, you don't necessarily even have the experiences to add to the story, you're working off of instinct and raw emotions and raw talent, and hopefully it's the same trajectory as growing as a person.
New Jersey was actually a very cold place. There was such an intense concentration of wealth, and such a low concentration of any actual human happiness. A lot of people seem to be similar to the kid in school, which is doing a lot of things with no direct consequence to their joy, or their lives.
