people-from-copenhagen

"In life, we experience relationships sometimes as being traumatic, especially when outside events affect our parents. When they make decisions that we hold them responsible for –– that affect our lives, not knowing all of the reasons they made those decisions for their life –– [it] creates a little bit of [a] gap and a little bit of a traumatic experience."

"These are the things I look for because I’m more seasoned than I was years ago. Directing is not about me. As an actor, God, it becomes all about me, and I don’t want it to be about me anymore. I’ve had enough of me."

"I've had some success in bringing some humanity to some of the villains that I played because I want to show that people are human and they do make mistakes and they do have the light and dark sides of themselves, and I had an idea that if we saw some of that we might be able to get wrapped around that in a way that we weren't able to before."

"I love parts of the story that reflect our innocence and then guide us to understanding. From seeing when we become hardened and non-innocent, how sweet those moments were and from whence we came."

"I mean for me to play desire, to play the desire not to be lonely is one thing, to play the desire to allow someone to know me. Right. So I relate to that in my life. Because people know me in my life as Gus Fring or Moff Gideon or Stan Edgar or a plethora of other characters. And so who really knows me? And do I want them to know me? Right. It depends on who that is. Right. So I used to want fans to know me, but now they know me through a variety of different characters. So then I have to ask myself, what is the reveal for me? And it’s the same for Gus. In that moment I’m thinking, oh, I desire to be known. For me I know I desire to be loved, I desire to be admired. I desire to be held. Thank goodness I have children who I can, I have daughters who I become more and more real, the more mature I get because I’m able to ask, I tell them, ask for what you want, but do I tell myself to ask for what I want?"

"I come from a European family. I had a very worldly way of looking at humanity and people and culture and religion, so I was surprised coming to America in 1962 as a young child to find there was this delineation [between races] here."

"When you are able to let your expectation of what might be go and listen to what is proposed, then you can create a new vision for yourself and see yourself walking in those shoes again."

"I had to find a way to drop my spirit and allow myself to be more observant of other people. So in the first years of Breaking Bad, I liked to do the method routine because it kept people away from me. No one wanted to come and say hello or chat about the weather. I’m not that chatty guy on set. I’m not the joker. Now after 12 years of playing the character, I can allow myself to be a bit looser."

"I look at things to uplift me and to enthuse me; I don’t look at things to pay the bills and help me just survive. While some may be terrified of the characters he’s played, the actor views his antagonists in a different light. What I feel with each character is an excitement and enthusiasm, a deep commitment and vulnerability to allow them to speak to me."

"I’m acting but not acting because I’m in such a place where, as an actor, all I have to do is listen. Whether it be your voice, who I’m talking to, or whether it be the voice inside me — and maybe that’s the key that I’ve never, ever talked about."

"The words are important, but the intention is of even greater importance. My job is to interpret that. As an actor, I’m an interpreter and a channeler. As a director, I’m able to interpret and then channel something original, infuse it with an original energy that extends and tells the story even more clearly."

"I look for a complete script. I look for characters who are inspiring, and who move our imaginations from one place to another. It just so happens that I’ve been asked to play characters in certain projects that have had somewhat of an edge, a darker side, if you will."

"You can't just cast off someone when you realise, oh, there's something inside that person that is a hint of something good," Esposito adds. "Why are they doing all this bad and then as TV shows unfold, you sort of get the clue. They were bullied when they were a child. They really seek all power, all of these things. So I found a niche and finding a way to bring some humanity in some ways to villainous persona."

"Sometimes I can’t even see out of my eyes because I’ve gone to a very dead drop space. Well, you could call it dead but maybe it’s actually very much alive. People get uncomfortable when you’re really listening, when you’re really paying attention, because we’re not used to that anymore. But now I can really see you. I can see all of you"

"As a director, I always look for projects that are uplifting and change the way we think about the world we live in, so those films aren’t always mainstream. I’m looking to do something that encompasses a man who’s trying to find himself, but it’s an action film. He’s struggling with something he’s done in his past and he’s moving through it in a way that puts him in a position where he becomes a stranger in a strange land. I want to tackle that."

"As children, we think that everything that’s done by our parents is done because of us, and sometimes that’s not very true. Sometimes things can never be right, but they can be understood in a different way if we’re able to listen to each other and do that vulnerable dance that’s required of us."

"I don't want anybody to say to me, 'I'm fine with it, I accept you.' You think, wow, thanks so much, because if you hadn't I would have killed myself."

"[Objecting to "radical feminists" opposition to trans people] How could you be so white and privileged and heterosexual and never marginalised in your life yet you decide to punch down on people?"

"When the feminist movement started in the 60s and 70s, lesbians were often excluded, because we were told that we would make the movement less palatable. I have been excluded myself, so how could I do that to someone else?"

"[The issue of safe spaces for biological women] I don't get this. I'm in my 45th year in showbusiness, travelling the country touring. I've been to every service-station toilet in the country. Every one has a sign up saying male cleaners in attendance. I don't recall anybody saying, "We need to group up against these male cleaners." Why would someone dress as a woman when they could just pick up a cleaning cloth? If it really bothers you there's a toilet some place else. Go there. Shut up. Let's join together and fight stuff that actually needs fighting. Why are they talking about this when women in Afghanistan are not allowed to sing or to look a man in the face? Who is benefiting from all this? The patriarchy. It makes me so sad."

"[On teaching her children to have good manners.] It's mainly because I wanted to send them out in the world and have everybody like them."

"[On men who take off their shirts in public.] There's an awful lot of lard out there. No woman would do that."

"[On working in television in the early 1980s.] I can't remember the number of times I was told, 'Don't you worry about that, you pretty little thing.' Wow. I've got a first-class degree from Cambridge, but OK."

"There are only two countries in the world where representatives of the state religion automatically get a seat in the legislature: the UK and Iran. Obviously, there are fundamental differences between the two countries and in the religious representatives’ views, but it is symbolic all the same. How can it be that our democratic system draws parallels with an Islamic theocracy?"

"[Guests have been asked to say their favourite thing about Denmark]."

"[Homophobic hostility is being caused by the] intemperate language on social media around the trans discussion. That's opened the door to people thinking it's now fair to have a general go at diversity, that the world is too woke. I don't know how you can be too woke — woke means being awake to the dangers that are around you. Mental health within the LGBTQ community is not good and that's not because you're not comfortable with who you are. It's the way society treats you."

"In the case of those solids, whether of earth, or rock, which enclose on all sides and contain crystals, selenites, marcasites, plants and their parts, bones and the shells of animals, and other bodies of this kind which are possessed of a smooth surface, these same bodies had already become hard at the time when the matter of the earth and rock containing them was still fluid. And not only did the earth and rock not produce the bodies contained in them, but they did not even exist as such when those bodies were produced in them."

"Beautiful is what we see, More Beautiful is what we know, most Beautiful by far is what we don't."

"There are those among us who would have us say that the mysteries of the brain are completely solved and little needs to be added to its knowledge. It is as if these fortunate persons had been present when this magnificent organ was created."

"We need only view a Dissection of that large Mass, the Brain, to have ground to bewail our Ignorance...We admire...the Fibres of every Muscle, and ought still more to admire their disposition in the Brain, where an infinite number of them contained in a very small Space, do each execute their particular Offices without confusion or disorder."

"Charles E. Sorensen was said to be second in command to Henry Ford at Ford Motor Company. He was in charge of the company's car production. He was instrumental in developing the production process for the World War II B-24 bomber plane at the Willow Run Plant. His contribution increased the production of the B-24s from one a day to one an hour."

"In all the years I knew Sorensen, he was never a politician in the plant. He was a cold aloof man, and never had any social relations with anyone in the company - myself included."

"The head of the Rouge plant, Charles E. Sorensen, was the most notorious of these tyrants, and he encouraged (or often forced) his foremen to follow his example. According to the company's historians, "As Ford reduced prices on cars, there was inevitable pressure from Sorensen down to weed out men, to keep the vast plant moving at its maximum pace. The entire [plant] felt the strain." Such dictatorial methods of control at every level of the plant's operations made the day-to-day experience of working there “relentless, harassing, and to many hateful.”"

"CHARLES E. SORENSEN was production boss of the Ford Motor Company until 1945. He is something of a legendary figure today, but hardly more so than when he directed the world's biggest mass production operation."

"Actually it took four years and more to develop Model T. Previous models were the guinea pigs, one might say, for experimentation and development of a car which would realize Henry Ford's dream of a car which anyone could afford to buy, which anyone could drive anywhere, and which almost anyone could keep in repair. Many of the world's greatest mechanical discoveries were accidents in the course of other experimentation. Not so Model T, which ushered in the motor transport age and set off a chain reaction of machine production now known as automation. All our experimentation at Ford in the early days was toward a fixed and, then wildly fantastic goal."

"By August, 1913, all links in the chain of moving assembly lines were complete except the last and most spectacular one - the one we had first experimented with one Sunday morning just five years before. Again a towrope was hitched to a chassis, this time pulled by a capstan. Each part was attached to the moving chassis in order, from axles at the beginning to bodies at the end of the line. Some parts took longer to attach than others; so, to keep an even pull on the towrope, there must be differently spaced intervals between delivery of the parts along the line. This called for patient timing and rearrangement until the flow of parts and the speed and intervals along the assembly line meshed into a perfectly synchronized operation throughout all stages of production. Before the end of the year a power-driven assembly line was in operation, and New Year's saw three more installed. Ford mass production and a new era in industrial history had begun."

"Charles E. Sorensen was hired by Henry Ford in 1905 as a pattern maker, a highly skilled craft of cutting exacting wood patterns from blueprints and creating a three-dimensional representation for foundry castings. "Cast-Iron Charlie," so nicknamed by Henry Ford for his foundry expertise, was master of the River Rouge empire. Fearless and ruthless, he personally was as tough as "Cast-Iron" and not hesitant to display the fact. Though respectful of the Ford family, his loyalty was to Henry, as Edsel had known only too well."

"Early one morning in the winter of 1906-7, Henry Ford dropped in at the pattern department of the Piquette Avenue plant to see me. 'Come with me, Charlie,' he said, 'I want to show you something.'"

"It took only a few days to block off the little room on the third floor back of the Piquette Avenue plant and to set up a few simple power tools and Joe Galamb's two blackboards. The blackboards were a good idea. They gave a king-sized drawing which, when all initial refinements had been made, could be photographed for two purposes: as a protection against patent suits attempting to prove prior claim to originality and as a substitute for blueprints. A little more than a year later Model T, the product of that cluttered little room, was announced to the world. But another half year passed before the first Model T was ready for what had already become a clamorous market..."

"By March, 1908, we were ready to announce Model T, but not to produce it, On October 1 of that year the first car was introduced to the public. From Joe Galamb's little room on the third floor had come a revolutionary vehicle. In the next eighteen years, out of Piquette Avenue, Highland Park, River Rouge, and from assembly plants all over the United States came 15,000,000 more."

"Ed Martin, who was plant superintendent, and I practically lived at the Rouge."

"As Ford reduced prices on cars, there was inevitable pressure from Sorensen down to weed out men, to keep the vast plant moving at its maximum pace. The entire 70,000 felt the strain. The pace was never too fast for accomplishment, but it was fast enough to make the job relentless, harassing, and to many hateful. Yet despite its sinister aspect, which organized labor and more enlightened management would in time cure, the Rouge stood out as a pioneering accomplishment in industry which affected both automotive and other manufacturing processes."

"The summer before, Mr. Ford told me to block off the experimental room for Joe Galamb, a momentous event occurred which would affect the entire automotive industry. The first heat of vanadium steel in the country was poured at the United Steel Company's plant in Canton, Ohio."

"A production genius and loyal servant of Henry Ford for thirty-nine years, Charles E. Sorensen is probably the best known of Ford's many lieutenants. His crowning achievement was design of the production layout of the mammoth plant at Ypsilanti, Michigan, where giant B-24 bombers were produced during World War II at the phenomenal rate of one every hour."

"One of the hardest-to-down myths about the evolution of mass production at Ford is one which credits much of the accomplishment to 'scientific management.' No one at Ford—not Mr. Ford, Couzens, Flanders, Wills, Pete Martin, nor I—was acquainted with the theories of the 'father of scientific management,' Frederick W. Taylor. Years later I ran across a quotation from a two-volume book about Taylor by Frank Barkley Copley, who reports a visit Taylor made to Detroit late in 1914, nearly a year after the moving assembly line had been installed at our Highland Park plant. Taylor expressed surprise to find that Detroit industrialists 'had undertaken to install the principles of scientific management without the aid of experts.' To my mind this unconscious admission by an expert is expert testimony on the futility of too great reliance on experts and should forever dispose of the legend that Taylor's ideas had any influence at Ford."

"Without titles and tier of officials how could one build an organization? When Flanders resigned as production manager taking with him his assistant Walborn, to work for a newly formed company, Henry Ford called Ed Martin and me to his office. "Ed and Charlie," he said, "Flanders and Walborn are leaving, and I want you to take their places. You Ed, will be plant superintendent and you Charlie, will be assistant superintendent. Just go out there and run the plant. I know you can do it. But there's one thing I want to add: work together as one. I don't ever want to hear that you can't work together. And don't worry about titles.""

"It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get into a position to destroy it. It is those who have achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up."

"But through the 1990's I developed signatures, somewhat radical and unmistakably mine. Francis Picabia remains my hero. The more you dive into his work, the wilder it becomes. He painted the skewed Cubist paintings that we all know. Then came the kitsch works. And he ended up doing these strange, abstract works that are impossible to grasp. Whenever you think you’ve got him, he’s always moved along. That’s what I aspire to do."

"At my age [74], you realize that some things have caught you. You can see that as a positive or a negative. On the negative side: Are you in a routine, unconsciously adapting to things that work well?.. ..The black Masonite [board, Kirkeby used to underlayment for his painting].. ..by not painting them black and instead making them beautiful, I’ve wondered if I have sold that particular idea. Edvard Munch, as he got older, sat at his home and painted like a wild man. Those works were not very popular and have come to be considered the 'wrong' Munch. But that’s how you need to be when you get old. I call it the arrogance of age: You don’t need recognition. You just don’t care."

"I have a garden and across the road, a park. I never go for walks, but I look out the window and 'ask for permission' [to paint the view] as I call it. If I need some green, I find it there. In that sense, I’m a very old-fashioned painter, tied to nature. But I remain modern in that I execute some rather impious structures. I will react if I feel that my paintings, though abstract, become too naturalistic. I have another studio in Italy and I worked a lot there this summer. I still depend on my surroundings, so some of my work was very influenced by the Italian landscape, its olive trees and the very cold green color of the leaves. You could identify the specific landscape in those paintings and it drove me crazy. So I had to destroy them. But even destruction can still help underline what is good about a picture."