Category: people

“You either save the city, or you lose the American spirit, you lose the American soul for the next 100 or 200 years. We’re not going to be rural people. We’re going to be more and more urban people, and more multicultural, and we’re either going to solve these problems that are inherent in the modern American city, or we’re not going to be a first-rate society.”

How to earn money as a classically trained, former Marine Corps band saxophonist? Leaping and twirling, and spotting Japanese tourists, on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum.

“Few actors enjoyed their fame as much as Mr. Hagman, who portrayed the oilman-robber baron J. R. as, in one critic’s words, ‘an overstuffed Iago in a Stetson hat.’ At the height of the show’s popularity, he handed out fake $100 bills with his face on them.”

“His name is Shahin Najafi. Last May, at least three ayatollahs called for his execution after he released a song they interpreted as insulting to Shia Islam’s 10th Imam. … Najafi is probably the most incendiary Iranian musician there is. His songs take on issues like sexual freedom, women’s rights, the sanctity of virginity, government corruption, rape in prison, and the rule of mullahs.”

“People listen to me now. Before, they didn’t. Now they give me much more platform to do things. That makes you superstar! If you use [fame] otherwise, you can also sit at home, indulge yourself in drugs and waste all the time. Which I have never done and never will!”

“Chan, 58, says at his age he can no longer continue doing the stunts that have made his movies famous. The star, who is known for his innovative moves, said he doesn’t want to end his life in a wheelchair.”

“A composer and arranger of church music, Ledger is much loved for his recordings with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, including a Christmas favourite, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. … He was a close associate of composer Benjamin Britten and worked with Peter Pears at the Aldeburgh Festival.”

“I have so much respect for people like Marty, or any director who only directs — all the battles over this and that, everybody giving their opinion. And you gotta listen to them. Because they paid for it. I’ve been through it, and it’s a real fight. There’s a quote: You gotta be part gangster. You’ve got to fight for what you want. You’ve got to listen to everybody’s opinion, then finally at the end of the day, you have to do what you feel is right.”

The San Francisco Symphony’s assistant principal violist goes to Taipei to find Shanghai.

“Lynch’s best films have a creepy mixture of privet-fenced normality and psychosexual violence. There isn’t much of either in Tillim’s photograph. Lynch must have just liked it. But then things get very Lynchian indeed.”