James Levine Quotes

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can't.

It was total naivety that got me to Hollywood. I thought it was going to happen straight away. I told myself 'give it 5 years, there's no way I'll be here after that if it doesn't happen'. Cut to ten years later!

I've got to be honest, with every job I do there's a part of me, that child in me, that goes, 'This is the one.' And it rarely actually is.

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

I moved to London with this really warped sense of expectation.

You're going to change the world? Well, go ahead and try. You'll give it up at a certain point and change yourself instead.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

I wanted to be a writer that had an impact. I wanted, and still I say the same thing, I want to write books that change people's lives, change how we think and live and read and write. I wanna write books that are read in 50 or 100 years.

What's unique about Washington is that no one's from here. Almost everybody came here to change the world, to make a difference.

As a person navigating the waters of public scrutiny, you are often unable to hold on to personal heroes or villains. Inevitably you will meet your hero, and he may turn out to be less than impressive, while your villain turns out to be the coolest cat you've ever met.

When I was younger, I had big visions of changing the world.

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

My father was something of a rainbow-chaser.

I was blinded by being a romantic person.

I used to be a hopeless romantic - I fell in love with everyone I went out with.

I was the classic liberal, left-wing, 'Theater is going to change the world' kind of person. You know, very, very boring.

We dream of the perfect wave, the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect love, and when we get there, we dream of something else, and the journey goes on.

I was sure I'd set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth - that I hadn't set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if 'The Big Trail' had been a success and launched me as a star.

To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed

When I finally got there, to where I thought was the top, I wasn't doing what I was doing in the beginning. I was not happy.

When you're young and idealistic, you don't care: you'll play to no one, in your bedroom - like kids with football - you'll play anywhere; you just love the music. And then, bang - soon as you're in the industry, you think that's the dream. But that's when the dream starts to end.

When you're younger, love is this magic thing where the heavens open up. You live 40 years past that, you realize sometimes the heavens close down.

It's always been the same from a long time ago, it's people with promises and people dangling carrots and when you're young and impressionable, and ambitious, you want to believe them. I was always lucky because there was always part of me that didn't believe these people.

I recognize the person that wanted to help people, working hard - naively maybe - to make the world a better place. But I don't recognize the person who was drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid.

That becomes the revolution, to be idealistic enough that you think you can change the world, and what you find is you can't change anything but yourself.