Quotes About Relevance

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order.

For artists of my caliber, we're not played on the radio, so we don't really get a chance to get involved in that debate at all. We don't get a chance, because this weird kind of ageism exists in pop music. If you're past a certain age, you're not relevant. That's the kind of cliched term.

If you get your teeth cleaned on Instagram live, it shows that you're just out of touch. That doesn't make you relatable or cool. It just makes you weird.

The weird thing was that Soft Cell was supposed to have come and gone before I started the album.

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.

I always kind of think if The Beatles were still around now, people would've lost interest quite a long time ago. Seven years of recording - it's there forever. I think not outstaying your welcome is a vital ingredient.

With comedies, often shorter is better. You don't want to outstay your welcome.

Marvel Comics has always been a place where I felt at home. It has been a very important part of my life and has always been a wellspring of creative and relevant ideas.

The medieval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.

I've just grown a little disappointed with 'Muppets in the Old West', 'Muppets Under Water' and all these weird concept movies. I just want to go take it back to the early 80's, when it was about the Muppets trying to put on a show. That's what I'm trying to bring back.

Much as my Boomer friends will hate me for saying this, Kanye West is the New Dylan. Not only do Kanye's best lyrics match Dylan's prescience, highly inventive word-play and genius for storytelling, his indefatigable cockiness eerily channels Muhammad Ali.

If you're into architecture and you're from the West, everything is hors d'oeuvres for working to rebuild the Temple. Ultimately you're led there. You can't escape it.

A lot of people - they might think I fell off, but they don't know I'm eating. I'm on the West coast, eating. It's just they don't hear about me because they don't see me on the TV. But I'm still around.

When Wu-Tang came, Wu-Tang was for that era, right there. When Dre had it in the West Coast, it was for that time. Biggie and them, it was for that time.

The period western doesn't have a lot to say to most people today.

A lot of people say writers start losing their powers after 60 or 65. But I look at the best-seller list and see a book by that 14-year-old gymnast, Dominique Moceanu, and I think, 'Now, what's she going to tell the world? And these 25-year-old rock stars, what are they going to tell the world?'

One knows something is important when the powers that be choose not to acknowledge it in public.

I deal with more practical issues of the Bible.

Books should have a purpose. Books should be practical in some sense.

It's good to be on the power list, but I don't see a practical use of it except when people introduce me to audiences.

Preach not because you have to say something, but because you have something to say.

No historical analogies are exactly precise.

The pitch should be very clear about what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why I should care. If you can cover those things quickly and precisely, it's easy for me to decide whether I want to spend more time with you or not.

Once you become predictable, no one's interested anymore.