He was one of these people who are serious about everything. Even when they laught. [p 48]
I’ve been quoted a lot as saying "I like boring things". Well, I said it and meant it. But that does’nt mean I’m not bored by theim. Of course, what I think is is boring must not be the same as what other people think is, since I could never stand to watch all the most popular action shows on TV, because they’re essentially the same plots and the same shots and the same cuts, over and over again. Apparently, most people love watching the same basic thing, as going to sit and watch the same thing, as long as the details are different. But I’m just the opposite : if I’m going to sit and watch the same thing I saw the night before, I don’nt want it to be essentially the same - I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look at the same thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptyer you feel. [p 50]
(about J. Kennedy’s death) He wanted to know why I was’nt more upset, so I told him about the time I was walking in India and saw a bunch of people in a clearing, having a ball because somebody they really liked had just died and how I realized then that everything was just how you decided to think about it. I’d been thrilled having Kennedy as president. He was handsome, young, smart - but it aidn’t bother me that much that he was dead. What bothered me was the way the television and radio where programming everybody to feel sad. [p 60]
That had always fascinated me : the way people could sit by a window on a porch all day and look out and never be bored, but if they went to a movie or a play, they suddenly objected to being bored. I always felt that a very slow film could be just as interesting as a porch-sit if you thought about it the same way. [p 207]