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There are things we know and things we don't know about food. But there are certain basic things we do know, and that's what I've tried to build these rules on.
Sep 29, 2025
The literal, basic thing of the stage is really like a magnet. It brings me back to earth.
When it comes to educating all of us about the most basic things in life, it seems to me we need more kindergartens and fewer graduate schools.
This basic thing I always do: 'What happened between the character's birth, and page one of the script?' Anything that's not in the story, I'll fill in the blanks.
All I can do is just go in there and tighten up my game, tighten up my handles. Just all the little basic things that you wouldn't even think about, the fundamental parts of the game.
My mother was always expanding my art skills and getting me to paint different things. You always got to push some. And, I mean, I learned basic things like getting up on time, how to shop - you know, you don't touch things in a store you're not going to buy. These things were taught very young. I don't see today enough of this basic, you know, basic skill teaching.
Here's an easy one: "Race is an entirely social construct." No, it's partially one, depending on how any given society seeks to define it and its implications. But there are basic things such as skin color and hair texture. Even a Martian who'd had no exposure to human "social constructs" would be able to spot those differences. But no Martian, as hard as he tried, could point at a "culture" or to "equality." Those are the social constructs. Those can't be measured in the same way as human DNA.
Even though L.A Confidential box-office was a fraction of, say, Titanic or the Grinch movie, it finds its audience and will continue doing so for who knows how long, because of the basic thing we love about movies, which is storytelling and performances.
And after a while, you just pare things down more and more and more, until you get to certain basic things which just - basic ideas which just seem to work for you over and over again.
The best way to look at any business is from the standpoint of the clients. So there are these certain basic things that aren't going to change. Companies are going to have needs for equity, debt, advice, FX, and derivatives. Individuals are going to have needs for auto loans, mortgages, something that looks like a deposit account, and the ability to send money to people. Those things aren't going to change.
One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.
If loyalty is, and always has been, perceived as obsolete, why do we continue to praise it? Because loyalty is essential to the most basic things that make life livable. Without loyalty there can be no love. Without loyalty there can be no family. Without loyalty there can be no friendship. Without loyalty there can be no commitment to community or country. And without those things, there can be no society.
I see a couple of things missing. Any society, any community, even in the family, when the elders don't do their jobs, the youth suffer. We have no done our job. I'm saying anybody 55 and up. We didn't teach people the basic things.
Come back down to basics. The basic things of life, the basic things for me are the things that turn me on more than anything. I'm actually trying to go back from where I was running from...the more essential things that I was ignoring.
We currently have a government planning to go to Mars, heal broken marriages, and build bridges to nowhere - and also one that cannot wage a war competently, cannot respond to a hurricane adequately, and cannot enforce borders. Is it too much to ask that it get the basic things right before embarking on grandiose schemes?
I write my lyrics the day I sing the song, so even when I have the basic things, I'm thinking what can I change, what can I add, how many harmonies can I do.
I believe Jesus was right, Buddha was right, and all of those people like that are right. They're all saying the same thing - and I believe it. I believe what Jesus actually said - the basic things he laid down about love and goodness - and not what people say he said.
One of the basic things we should avoid is to criticize others. Better to criticize yourself. Criticize yourself, criticize your brothers and sisters, criticize your country, criticize all the habits you have and laugh at yourself, is the best way. If you know how to laugh at yourself then you will not object or will not stand in the way of any creativity of another person.
On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away.
You are not the sum of your physical, mental, emotional life, but you are designed for the spiritual. The whole design of the human being is created to enjoy your spiritual life and not the material life. This is the basic thing human beings don't understand and that's why, if they knew this fundamental thing, they would seek their spirit first and they would not seek other things.
Freedom is the basic thing. Consciousness grows in freedom and starts dying, becomes paralyzed and crippled, when things are forced. And up to now, this has been done. This is the greatest crime that parents have always committed against children. They go on forcing the child.
When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.
Cookbooks hit you where you live. You want comfort; you want security; you want food; you want to not be hungry and not only do you want those basic things fixed, you want it done in a really nice, gentle way that makes you feel loved. That's a big desire, and cookbooks say to the person reading them, 'If you will read me, you will be able to do this for yourself and for others. You will make everybody feel better.'
They were afraid of your authentic love, because authentic love is beyond their control.You are possessed by it. You are not the possessor, you are the possessed. And every society wants you to be in control. The society is afraid of your wild nature, it is afraid of your naturalness, so from the very beginning it starts cutting your wings. And the most basic thing which is dangerous in you is the possibility of love, because if you are possessed by love you can go even against the whole world.
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.
The basic thing a man should know is how to change a tyre and how to drive a tractor. Whatever that bearded dude is doing on the Dos Equis beer commercials sets the bar. That's your guy. Every man should be aiming to be like him. The beard is just the tip of the iceberg.
All religions teach the same basic thing, that you have to stand up for those that are considered the worst.
Throughout my whole life, as a performer, I've never played with a band. I've always played alone, so I was never required to stay in rhythm or anything. So it was a real different experience for me to start playing with a band. There were so many basic things for me to learn.
I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things.
I was scared before every battle. That old instinct of self-preservation is a pretty basic thing, but while the action was going on some part of my mind shut off and my training and discipline took over. I did what I had to do.
Generally, the best way to learn git is probably to first only do very basic things and not even look at some of the things you can do until you are familiar and confident about the basics.
Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers.
One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty.
We just can't love without God. God wants for us want we want for ourselves. These basic things are not that hard to grasp. We just have to have faith, and faith is a gift. We just need to accept it.
And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up
One of the most basic things we can do is let the men in our lives know it's not okay to mistreat a woman.
Everybody forgets the basic thing; people are not going to love you unless you love them.
Some of the things that I do, I think are very important and much more important than the radio show or the television show that I do or anything else that I do. I think right at the top of the list is the basic thing. And of course the basic thing is to hopefully stop people from killing anything. And to create a non-violent diet for themselves, because a non-violent world has roots in a non-violent diet.
Perhaps the basic thing which contributes to charm is the ability to forget oneself and be engrossed in other people.
It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.
The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition.
Experimental novels are sometimes terribly clever and very seldom read. But the story that appeals to the child sitting on your knee is the one that satisfies the curiosity we all have about what happened then, and then, and then. This is the final restriction put on the technique of telling a story. A basic thing called story is built into the human condition. It's what we are; it's something to which we react.
If I can get a day to myself, I won't answer the phone, I'll read or go for a walk. Simple, basic things. People think there's always time to do that but there isn't. Life is short.
I'm sort of annoyed that some very basic things about poetic forms were not conveyed to me in the various poetry courses I took over the years.
But one thing you have to understand clearly is that it is the man who longs for domination, and it is the woman who dominates. This is what I call coexistence: live and let live. More than that is all imagination. If you really had known what love is...the basic thing is not to create a relationship. Stand aloof as the pillars of a temple stand aloof, but support the same roof. Don't destroy the individuality of the other, enhance it if you can; otherwise, at least leave it as it is, uninterfered with.
We use the Air Force analogy: there were expensive things they had to do to get a cockpit suitable for a lot of pilots, like wraparound windshields, but their initial solutions, when they realized average didn't work, were adjustable seats. How in the world did they not already have adjustable seats in their planes? We're looking for adjustable seats for education, for basic things that we can do.
At their core, Americans all want the same basic things: a quality education for their children, a good job so they can provide for their families, healthcare and affordable prescription drugs, security during retirement, a strongly equipped military and national security.
The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?
Basically we could not have peace, or an atmosphere in which peace could grow, unless we recognized the rights of individual human beings... their importance, their dignity... and agreed that was the basic thing that had to be accepted throughout the world.
When you realize how hard it is to know the truth about yourself, you understand that even the most exhaustive and well-meaning autobiography, determined to tell the truth, represents, at best, a guess. There have been times in my life when I felt incredibly happy. Life was full. I seemed productive. Then I thought,"Am I really happy or am I merely masking a deep depression with frantic activity?" If I don't know such basic things about myself, who does?