Human existence is a brutal experience to me... it's a brutal, meaningless experience - an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, terrible experience, and so it salvation is what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most.

I have no regard for that kind of ceremony. I just don't think they know what they're doing. When you see who wins those things-or who doesn't win them-you can see how meaningless this Oscar thing is.

In 1940 I was just turning 5 years old and being taken to the movies. For those of us who were not old enough to understand the horror of war it was a very romantic era because these guys were kissing their wives and girlfriends goodbye and going off to fight and become heroes.

I, interestingly, had dated a woman in the Eisenhower Administration briefly, and it was ironic to me 'cause I was trying to do toher what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years.

Your self-esteem is a notch below Kafka.

Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.

Everyone wants to get out of living where they're living now, because life is a pretty tough proposition and not much fun. But when you think back to earlier times, you only extrapolate the nice things.