Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Every man is his own hell.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

I’m a girls‘ girl. I have guy friends, but the problem with having guy friends is, like, I always get linked to them, and they’ll end up in a slideshow of people I’ve apparently dated on the Internet.

I do things I love doing. Sometimes that is maybe going out to have a drink with friends, going out partying or whatever.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

Friends accept you the way you are.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

I’ve been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.

Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Often we can help each other most by leaving each other alone; at other times we need the hand-grasp and the word of cheer.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under a McCain administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.