Toni Morrison
Novelist and editor; Nobel laureate in Literature, 1993
it's not profound regret. It's just a wiping up of tiny, little messes that you didn't recognize as a mess when they were going on
Recorded
Terry Gross, Fresh Air, NPR, 22 January 2016
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Werner Herzog
Film director, screenwriter and opera director
Roll up your sleeves and work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse. Drive a taxi for six months and you’ll have enough money to make a film. Walk on foot, learn languages and a craft or trade that has nothing to do with cinema. Filmmaking — like great literature — must have experience of life at its foundation. Read Conrad or Hemingway and you can tell how much real life is in those books.