One of my favorite things about the end of one year and the start of a new one is Esquire's The Meaning of Life.
I'm serious.
What's The Meaning of Life? It's part of the magazine's January issue where famous and influential people riff freely about What They've Learned over the years. There's no rhyme or reason as to how long their thoughts and pieces of advice are, or how many are printed. It's just a random collection.
Esquire's been doing The Meaning of Life since 1998. And they seem to have featured everyone from Ray Charles to Jack Nicholson to Christopher Reeve.
Some of my favorites through the years:
"The minute you start believing your own success, you're on the road to ruin." Faye Dunaway
"If you're smart, then your dreams evolve, too." Mario Batali
"Very few people know this: There's a Prada outlet store. But it's in Tuscany." Peter Boyle
"Hire people who will treat the switchboard operator as friendly as they'll treat the managing director." Sir Richard Branson
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This year, the magazine gathered 50 famous people, each representing a different US state. I've read all 50 and have whittled them down to some personal favorites. Thought I'd share. Seemed like a great way to kick off '09.
What I've Learned
"I never played when I didn't want to be the best out there every night. Not once." Larry Bird
"Everybody wants the world to be like them." Peter Fonda
"When I moved to LA with this little wimpy garage band, the first people we met were the Doors. Then we met Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. All of the people who died of excess were our big brothers and sisters. So I said to myself: How do you become a legend and enjoy it? The answer is to create a character as legendary as those guys and leave that character on the stage." Alice Cooper
"Ten seconds from now you don't know what you're gonna say or think. So who's in charge?" Harry Dean Stanton
"When you're behind, get up earlier." Jesse Jackson
"Loyalty ends when integrity is jeopardized." Brent Scowcroft
"Here's the wonderful thing that Bruce Springsteen and David Chase are capable of: Those two guys have the remarkable talent of transporting you to their own time zone, to their own rhythm, and slowing things down. That's an extraordinarily important talent these days, when everything is temporary and disposable and going by at a hundred miles an hour. In the old days, they would have been called wizards, because they control time." Steven Van Zandt
"God ain't got nothing to do with winning a damn football game." Jim Brown
"A traveling companion gives you a reminder that what's valuable about the world is the existence of other people." Rory Stewart
"The best thing I've done with money is give my kids a chance to get the best education they could get." Jeb Bush
"They're not going to tell you where the guy is unless they like you more than than they like the guy." Duane "Dog" Chapman
"I would prefer to be a little nervous, because when you stop being nervous is kind of when you stop caring." Conor Oberst, Songwriter
"I would never vote for someone who had never changed their mind on anything, because I know I was not crafted perfectly at age eighteen." Phil Bredesen, Governor of Tennessee
"Million Dollar Baby won the Academy Award. That was nice, that was great. But you don't dwell on it. An awful lot of good pictures haven't won Academy Awards, so it doesn't have much bearing. Letters From Iwo Jima was nominated for an Academy Award. We didn't win it, but that picture was still as good as I could do it. Did it deserve it less than some other picture? No not really. But there are other aspects that come into it. In the end, you've just got to be happy with what you've done." Clint Eastwood
"There's 10 percent on each end that make all the noise." Toby Keith
"People say Joe Lewis had twenty-five consecutive wins as a champion. That's because they didn't have videotape. You couldn't pick up his style unless you was in there with him." Evander Holyfield
"If employees are not challenging people in authority, they're not doing their job. If they're not using their knowledge to help us make better decisions, what good are they? We might as well have empty chairs." Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, America's largest private company
"When you chase music for money, God walks out of the room." Quincy Jones
"What I've noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer." Philip Glass
"In a hundred years, all new people." Warren Miller
"A quick story about Frank Sinatra. He was working a place in Philadelphia, and one night the place was packed and young girls were screaming. I would later work the same place, and the owner told me that it was a rainy night and Frank was late. It was a two story building, and he walked out onto the porch above the alley to see if Sinatra was on his way. He said, 'Right then, I see Frank jump out of cab and run like hell down the alley, and when he got a hundred feet from the stage door, he stopped, took off his coat, hung it over his shoulder, straightened his hat, and slowly walked in.' Now that's a picture worth remembering". Wayne Newton
And there are lots more. Pick up the issue. It's a great read. Or perhaps even better, buy a book here.
That's such a great idea for a feature. Don't think they do that over here in the UK but like the ones you've picked out
Posted by: neilperkin | January 07, 2009 at 05:09 AM
appreciate the comment, neil. a UK group, or even a complete global-focused collection of people, sure would be cool... thanks for reading.
Posted by: John Drake | January 07, 2009 at 08:09 AM