Growing up I didn’t watch movies.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

I could never identify with that word, ‚weak.‘

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.

The possession of anything begins in the mind.

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

If you want to go somewhere, it is best to find someone who has already been there.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Stand-up is hard.

The secret to humor is surprise.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

I’m not really book-smart.

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

I love good film, whether it’s an independent or studio film. The independent films, I think the good ones aren’t necessarily eccentric ones but they’re the more specific ones.

To create something you must be something.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera – or an NHL game.

I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it’s a shield.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

It’s very difficult to regulate yourself, and if you learn to do that, well, it starts to spill over.

It is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn’t have an eventful childhood.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Much of everyday life is filled with opportunities to be distracted. Our possessions… entertainment… cares and anxieties… and even the passionate desire and pursuit of things, some good and not so good, can keep our minds and hearts caught up in a flurry of activity.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

Sixth grade was a big time, in my childhood, of hoops and friendship, and coming up with funny things.

Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys… Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at grandma’s house… and a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both.

I’m selfish.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

I was arrested for lip-syncing karaoke.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

What you put into life is what you get out of it.

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.

You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

To those whose talents are above mediocrity, the highest subjects may be announced. To those who are below mediocrity, the highest subjects may not be announced.

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.