Early Works Quotes

The books that I wrote in my late teens and 20s, the little love stories, they were right from the heart.

Steven Spielberg had a tremendous influence on me through his early stuff. 'E.T.', 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - 'Jaws,' I think, is one of the most beautifully directed films ever.

The world that seemed so various and new, well, it does contract. One's burning desire to investigate human behavior, and to make, or imply, statements about it, does fall off. And so one does find that early works are full of energy and also full of vulgarity, crudity, and incompetence, and later works are more carefully finished, and in that sense better literary products. But . . . there's often a freshness that is missing in later works--for every gain there's a loss. I think it evens out in that way.

I love the early films of Al Pacino - 'Scarface,' 'Serpico' - and I love many science-fiction films.

The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.

I love the early sonatas; I love the early Mozart, period. I'm really fond of that moment when he was either emulating Haydn or Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or anybody but himself. The moment he found himself, as conventional wisdom would have it, at the age of 18 or 19 or 20, I stop being so interested in him.

I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it's the opposite: I believe 'Durable Goods' is the best thing I've written.

I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups.

I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself.

Everyone thinks 'Lola' was my first film, but I'd made 14 movies before that.

Documentation is misleading, because the performance is dead. So the very early works were not documented at all.