Brion Quotes & Sayings

You know, stand-up comedy is where I pretty much started out. — Brion James

There are a lot of producers who basically have their sound, and if the artist works with them, you almost know what the record's going to sound like before it comes out. — Jon Brion

Brian Eno developed systems to keep himself on edge and to keep himself in a position where he's generating ideas. — Jon Brion

Some trillions of years ago a sloppy, dirty giant flicked grease from his fingers. One of those gobs of grease is our universe on its way to the floor. Splat! — Brion Gysin

I prayed to God for help and I put myself in a recovery house called Studio 12. It was for people in the business and you didn't have to have any money to go, which was good because I was broke. — Brion James

Some Southerners effectively applied slave labor to the cultivation of corn, grain, and hemp (for making rope and twine), to mining and lumbering, to building canals and railroads, and even to the manufacture of textiles, iron, and other industrial products. Nevertheless, no other American region contained so many white farmers who merely subsisted on their own produce. The "typical" white Southerner was not a slaveholding planter but a small farmer who tried, often without success, to achieve both relative self-sufficiency and a steady income from marketable cash crops. — David Brion Davis

You should never do two things. You should hammer one nail all your life, and I didn't do that; I hammered on a lot of nails like a xylophone. — Brion Gysin

My dad had a movie theater so I was there every night. — Brion James

As far as I'm concerned, any work you get is because people have heard other work you've done. — Jon Brion

The subject of British abolitionism has long been controversial, complex, and even baffling. It also raises the issue of moral progress in history - whether groups of reformers and even nations can succeed in eliminating deeply entrenched forms of human oppression, and if so, by what methods, misconceptions, and under what conditions? — David Brion Davis

Some people are more fluid than others at just being themselves and recognizing what's good about themselves. — Jon Brion

I'm big and a lot of the stars are smaller so if you're big and mean looking, you play bad guys. After Blade Runner, I was the meanest guy in Hollywood. — Brion James

Blade Runner helped make my career. Everybody was in it. Who knew? — Brion James

Humans are no less eager than in the past to dominate, degrade, humiliate, and control - often in order to confirm their own sense of pride and superiority. (Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that this was the main motive for slavery.) But — David Brion Davis

May 4, 1985. I am packing for a short trip to New York to discuss the cat book with Brion. In the front room where the kittens are kept, Calico Jane is nursing one black kitten. I pick up my Tourister. It seems heavy. I look inside and there are her other four kittens.
Take care of my babies. Take them with you wherever you go. — William S. Burroughs

You really think that's where any of us are headed?" She actually gave him a grin, baring straight white teeth, her face lit by the golden glow of the dawn. It jarred him to realize that Brion had been right - this girl was absolutely gorgeous. "I'll see you in the darklands, Agallon. Save a demon or two for me. — Morgan Rhodes

Despite widespread attemps to equate human captives with domestic animals and even to market them and price them the same way < ... > slaves were fortunately never held long enough in a distinctive group to undergo genetic neoteny < ... >. Yet a kind of neoteny was clearly the goal of many slaveholders, even if they lacked a scientific understanding of how domestication changed the nature and behavior of animals. Aristotle's ideal of the "natural slave" was very close to what a human being would be like if subjected to a genetic change similar to that of domesticated plants and animals. — David Brion Davis

In the '70s, everybody was doing drugs, so long as you showed up and did your work, they'd use you until you died. — Brion James

Larry Kasdan is a great director. — Brion James

The first wine I drank, a Chateau Haut-Brion, I was 22, it was my first glass of wine, and I discovered voluptuousness. From there, I started tasting French wines, then Spanish wines, then Italian wines. — Carole Bouquet

Things begin, things decay, and you've got to find a way to be okay. — Jon Brion

I'm a parrot. I can pick up an accent and just do it. — Brion James

Several travelers noted that American masters wanted above all to be "popular" with their slaves - a characteristically American need that was probably rare in Brazil or the Caribbean. — David Brion Davis

< ... > black slavery was basic and integral to the entire phenomenon we call "America." This often hidden or disguised truth ultimately involves the profound contradiction of a free society that was made possible by black slave labor. — David Brion Davis

A final word should be said concerning the status of free blacks. Before the American Revolution this status had been ambiguous, and the number of free blacks was insignificant. < ... > A rash of new laws, similar to the later Black Codes of Reconstruction, reduced free blacks almost to the status of slaves without masters. The new laws regulated their freedom of movement, forbade them to associate with slaves, subjected them to surveillance and discipline by whites, denied them the legal right to testify in court against whites, required them to work at approved jobs, and threatened them with penal labor if not actual reenslavement. — David Brion Davis

What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you, right now. What are we here for? We are here to go! — Brion Gysin

The people I choose to work with, I work with because I'm already impressed with them, you know? — Jon Brion

When you get to be my age there are more and more people you have known that you miss. Brion [Gysin], Antony Balch, Ian Summerville are ones I think of right away I was quite close to. — William S. Burroughs

We must face the ultimate contradiction that our free and democratic society was made possible by massive slave labor. — David Brion Davis

We have seen the death of Republicanism, of special privilege and national boodle. — Clyde Brion Davis

Producing is nothing more than bringing all the elements together, connecting people. — Brion James

The first person who really showed me the ugly spirit was Brion Gysin. "The ugly spirit shot Joan because ... " and I never found out why. This Brion wrote out on a piece of paper in a sort of trance state. — Allen Ginsberg

I was a different kind of kid, oversensitive and all that. — Brion James

I never play a villain that I don't have something I can either do or say so the audience sees there is something redeemable about them. In other words, I don't want to do evil for evil's sake. I don't want to do Jason slasher movies. There's no point in that. — Brion James

Since very early in my career, I have always did my own stunt fighting. — Brion James

I'm a character actor, so I don't take the hit if the movie's bad, the lead does. So, I don't want to be the lead. He takes the hit, I don't. — Brion James

Sad to say, in a present-day world that seems to be governed by clashing self
interests and material forces, where we have learned that idealistic rhetoric usually cloaks nationalistic purposes or even far more diabolical schemes, it has become increasingly difficult to explain collective actions that profess to be driven by virtuous ideals or a desire to make the world a better place. During the past century, various national leaders have ordered the slaughter of tens of millions of people as the supposedly necessary means to perfect the world. Today we are far more cynical, I fear, than the generations at the beginning of the past genocidal century, before the First World War and the Russian Revolution. — David Brion Davis

After noticing the fuel gauges were reading near empty, I looked out the top window, and I could see the fuel cap was being dragged along in the slipstream by its anchoring chain. Since the top of the wing was a low-pressure area, it had sucked my fuel right out and overboard. So, — Tom Brion

The idea was that we would decide the order when we looked at the proofs. I remember Brion Gysin saying "Well, why change it? It's perfect the way it is, the way it came from the printer." Made one major change, that is, the first chapter that came from the printers, which would be the beginning, we moved to the end. The first chapter became the last chapter. There's no actual cutups in Naked Lunch. — William S. Burroughs

OFFICERS OF OUR GUERILLA MUST BE POETS.
THE AREA OF POETRY MUST BE CONSTANTLY RE-CREATED.
- Brion Gysin, Guerrilla Conditions, nd. — Brion Gysin

Writing is fifty years behind painting. — Brion Gysin

I couldn't say no to jobs and I couldn't say no to drugs. I'd get high from a movie, I'd be somebody else because I didn't particularly like me, so long as I had a script in my hand, I was okay. As soon as the movie was over, I didn't know what to do. — Brion James

I am star-struck but also I've known a lot of people for a long time. Like I'm super star-struck by Grant Lee Phillips and Jon Brion but I've known them for 17 years. So it's kinda like weird to be star-struck still, but I still am! — Margaret Cho

For Southerners, a white skin was the distinguishing badge of mind and intellect. Black skin was the sign that a given people had been providentially designed to serve as menial laborers, as what Hammond called the "mudsill" class necessary to support every society. — David Brion Davis

We're so used to everything being properly manicured, like you can hear every footstep in a movie, you can hear every bit of dialogue, and everything is in its place. — Jon Brion

My whole deal when I do accents or dialects is I gotta fool the locals. If I fool the locals then I've done my job. — Brion James

It is of inestimable importance that the classical and biblical traditions linked slavery with original sin, punishment < ... >, the later abolition of slavery became tied with personal and collective freedom, with the redemption from sin, with the romanticizing of many form of labor, and with the ultimate salvation of humankind. — David Brion Davis

It was the mission of the Confederacy, ordinary whites were told, to carry out God's design for an inferior and dependent race. Slaveholders claimed that owning slaves always entailed a duty and a burden - a duty and burden that defined the moral superiority of the South. And this duty and burden was respected by millions of nonslaveholding whites, who were prepared to defend it with their lives. That, perhaps, was the ultimate meaning of a slave society. — David Brion Davis

She feels "Brutal Dynasty" actually may become the Great American Novel she and her fellow critics have been looking for so long. — Clyde Brion Davis

Much as slavery in the United States was part of a larger Atlantic Slave System, so America's War of Independence was an outgrowth of Europe's Seven Years' War - from 1756 to 1763 - and also a precursor or harbinger of the French and Haitian revolutions and of the subsequent Latin American wars for independence from Spain. — David Brion Davis

I could easily blast so much keef night and day I become a bouhali; a real-gone crazy, a holy untouchable madman unto whom everything is permitted, nothing is true. — Brion Gysin

You need to think with your head, not only your heart."
He couldn't help but snort softly at that. "You think I'm using my heart right now?"
Brion rolled his eyes. "Yes. And in case there's any doubt, your heart is an idiot just like the rest of you ... — Morgan Rhodes

< ... > many national leaders including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King saw American slavery as an immense problem, a curse, a blight, or a national disease. If the degree of their revulsion varied, they agreed that the nation would be much safer, purer, happier, and better off without the racial slavery that they had inherited from previous generations and, some of them would emphasize, from England. Most of them also believed that America would be an infinitely better and less complicated place without the African American population, which most white leaders associated with all the defects, mistakes, sins, shortcomings, and animality of an otherwise almost perfect nation. — David Brion Davis

Taken as a whole, the last four administrations represent the culmination of a century of executive abuse. With each successive president from forty-one to forty-four the disease grew worse. By the time Obama leaves office in 2017, Americans will have suffered under twenty-eight consecutive years of unconstitutional executive usurpation of power. An elected king? The British taxpayer spends around $50 million annually to support the entire royal family. With an annual budget that exceeds $1 billion for expenses, including travel, the American president supplanted the British monarch in everything but a title long ago. — Brion McClanahan

If a novelist were so uncouth and possessed of so little moral sense that he should write of illicit love, his book would be barred from the public libraries and he woukd be ostracized by society. — Clyde Brion Davis

I'd like to think that most of what I do is self-evident if you're listening to it or seeing it. But I don't mind the fact that it's hard to describe. — Jon Brion

I play out negative fantasies for people. I'm the guy people love to hate. And they always remember the bad guy. — Brion James

Music looks very formidable to people outside of it and it looks like it's this realm of spooky genius. — Jon Brion

The resulting texts always took a narrative term, enigmatic at first but ultimately explicit and often premonitory. The semantic distribution of these basic elements diverted them from their original meaning, thus revealing their real significance. Henceforth, every form of writing will consist of an operation of decoding, of contamination, and of sense perversion. All this because all language is essentially mystification, and everything is fiction. — Brion Gysin

When ya gotta goNow we know what we are here for. We are not here to love fear and serve any old bearded but invisible thunder god. We are here to go. — Brion Gysin

The bad guys are the best parts. — Brion James

For ten thousand centimos, I'm tempted to turn you in myself,"Brion said.
Jonas snorted uneasily."For ten thousand centimos, I'm tempted to turn myself in. — Morgan Rhodes

The best thing about Sci-Fi, which is my favorite genre, is that there are no rules for behavior. So you can do anything you want. — Brion James

When I was younger, I looked at getting older as this process of getting less interested in things and becoming colder, and of finding less joy in the mystery of things. And I've found the exact opposite to be true. I find that I'm getting warmer, and that I'm more mystified by human interactions. — Jon Brion

HIt is surely certain - as certain as one can be about any historical events - that the fall of New World slavery could not have occurred if there had been no abolitionist movements. We can thus end on a positive note of willed achievement, a century's moral achievement that may have no parallel. It is an achievement, despite its many limitations, that should help inspire some confidence in other movements for social change, for not being condemned to fully accept the world into which we are born. — David Brion Davis

I enjoy inventing things out of fun. After all, life is a game, not a career. — Brion Gysin

As no two people see the world the same way, all trips from here to there are imaginary; all truth is a tale I am telling myself. — Brion Gysin

I did 125 films, and over 100 television shows, and you've never seen the same character twice. — Brion James

Wake up - time to die. — Brion James

If we're given a number of circumstances to deal with, the brain goes into this mode of trying to find a solution, and it's amazing how good we are at it. — Jon Brion

Westerns was why I got into the business. I grew up on a small farm in California and all I ever wanted to do was to play gangsters and cowboys in movies. — Brion James

I still do television. I don't care. I just want to work. I love to work. I want to do 500 movies. — Brion James

You never know what show is going to change your life. — Brion James

[Brion calls his working relationship with West a natural fit.] His knowledge and understanding of records across the board is great, ... That's the reason why we got along: We don't see music as something that happens in one genre. — Jon Brion

People's association with improvisation means one person playing an endless stream of notes over something, and it doesn't have to be. — Jon Brion

I liked the drama of getting stoned. — Brion James

It was so much fun conducting an orchestra and watching the musicians' faces as some of Kanye's lyrics went by. They couldn't believe what was going on. — Jon Brion

What matters is that Southern slaves, at least on the larger plantations, created their own African
American culture, which helped to preserve some of the more crucial areas of life and thought from white control or domination without significantly
reducing the productivity and profitability of slave labor. Living within this African American culture, sustained by strong community ties, many slaves were able to maintain a certain sense of apartness, of pride, and of independent identity. — David Brion Davis

< ... > this Revolutionary ideology, epitomized by the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, showed that the very idea of slavery is a fiction or fraud, since liberty and equality are fundamental rights that no one can legitimately lose. — David Brion Davis

I've never considered myself a leading man, don't look like one, don't want to be one. — Brion James

I could talk about Blade Runner forever. — Brion James

Work begets work. — Brion James

Thus the word "inhuman", in this book's title, refers to the unconscionable and unsuccessful goal of bestializing (in the form of pets as well as beasts of burden) a class of human beings. — David Brion Davis

WHITEWASHING HISTORY "Whoa!" you might say. "We've never heard this story about the Democrats. Are you making this stuff up?" Actually, no. Nothing I write in this chapter is controversial in terms of whether it happened or not. I am relying on the mainstream historians of slavery: David Brion Davis, Kenneth Stampp, Eugene Genovese, Orlando Patterson. How, then, can my arguments sound so outrageous? The reason is that progressive Democrats have whitewashed the party's history. They have cleaned up the record. — Dinesh D'Souza

I'll have you understand the United States has got the best navy in the world."
"Well, . . . why, then, do we need a bigger navy?"
"We've got to have a still bigger navy because we're the richest nation on earth. — Clyde Brion Davis

Although the Civil War was an apocalyptic success in the sense that it brought an end to nearly a century of struggle and broken hopes regarding the ultimate extinction of African American slavery, it also combined new freedoms, as in other major revolutions, with shock, breakdown, trauma, and tragedy. Neither desired nor accurately anticipated by leaders in the North and South, the war dramatized the failure of the whole American system of political negotiation and compromise that had never weakened the institution of slavery but had supported democratic government for whites for over eighty years. < ... > Moreover, the long-term outcome of this revolutionary decision would be determined within a context of sectional hate and bitterness, political revenge, and competing presssures for reconciliation, reunion, and forgiveness. — David Brion Davis

The interesting part of the process is developing the character, you know, why did he become that? Why is the guy a murderer, or why is this guy a pervert, or whatever he is. So that's the fun part for me to delve into the abyss. — Brion James

I've made a point of not being, say what I refer to as a 'careerist' about anything. — Jon Brion

Man is a bad animal.... — Brion Gysin

< ... > tyranny is a central theme of American history, that racial exploitation and racial conflict have been part of the DNA of American culture. — David Brion Davis

What is it?" Brion asked. "You look like you've been chewing on the ass end of a goat." Jonas — Morgan Rhodes

It may not be the "Great American Novel" they talk about, because its scope is not broad enough to take in all of America, but it pictures the people and the customs and the drama of upstate New York in the days preceding and following the Civil War with a simplicity that, to my mind, is true art. — Clyde Brion Davis