Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours. ↗
Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone. ↗
Compared to dancing, films seemed to me to be the work of lay bums. There was no physical pain; it was enough to say and imagine what was in the script. It was very easy for me. ↗
The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery. ↗
I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material. ↗
I see all the red carpet paparazzi stuff and I'm like, 'Really? Do I have to?!' I like to work and I know that's part of the job. But you kind of take it in stride. ↗