I came across a good link (via) to a collection of interviews featured in Esquire magazine in a monthy section they call “What I’ve Learned”, which features the thoughts and insights of well-known people. It is well worth your time to read every one of these interviews. This is exactly the kind of material that makes Esquire enjoyable and thoughtful to read. It’s the kind of information you can only get from people when you listen to them talk for a good long while. If you listen long enough the heavy personal insights bubble up to the surface of conversation where you can fish them out. Here are a few that got me thinking and nodding to myself:
Kirk Douglas:
It seems as if only now I really know who I am. My strengths, my weaknesses, my jealousiesit’s as if all of it has been boiling in a pot for all these years, and as it boils, it evaporates into steam, and all that’s left in the pot in the end is your essence, the stuff you started out with in the very beginning.
Roseanne:
Women love to lose themselves in effect. Men love to lose themselves in cause.
Charles Townsend:
If you think of intelligence as knowing a lot of things, of responding quickly and brightly, you can recognize that. But if you think of intelligence as someone who is creative, someone who can think new things and think deeper thoughts, that’s not always easy to recognize. People have different characteristics.
Rod Steiger:
In the fifties, I went to see this analyst. It was the vogue. I told him, “Now, look, before we go into thisI have to be free to create; I have to be free to do things. I have to be free to get up when I want, sleep with anyone I want, do what I want to do. I can’t be regimented; I have to be free!” And he said, “That’s fine. Just be careful you don’t become a slave to freedom.”
You can buy the book: Esquire the Meaning of Life online at Amazon.com for super cheap.