I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn’t want them either, so it worked out well.

A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

I thought ‚Heller‘ was a very bad decision.

I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‚Why did you do that?‘ This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

I make it a rule never to smoke while I’m sleeping.

The Internet is a big distraction.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

I don’t believe in signing anything and everything that comes my way. I leave it to my agency to help narrow them down for me, but I do research it myself before signing. The image of the brand and its ambassadors go hand in hand.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

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.

Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.

If you judge, investigate.

A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, ‚If you don’t know how to make the right decision, you’re not a director.‘

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

The woman that deliberates is lost.

He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.

When there’s so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you’ve already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days?

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

I love being busy.

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

Fame is like caviar, you know – it’s good to have caviar but not when you have it at every meal.

You do the policy, I’ll do the politics.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

I bought a gun and chose drugs instead.

I’m not really a Hollywood person. Not that I don’t like L.A., but I’m just a Northern California guy.

It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.

You may delay, but time will not.

What we won when all of our people united must not be lost in suspicion and distrust and selfishness and politics. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as president.

I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is choosing the kind of universe you exist in: is it helpful and supportive or hostile and unsupportive? Your answer to this question will make all the difference in terms of how you live your life and what kind of Divine assistance you attract.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it’s an illusory sense of control.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

There was the time I bought three cars in the span of three or four weeks. It was crazy; it wasn’t greedy. It was mine, my girl’s, my mom’s. I got Benzes for my ladies. But I felt crazy. You have to understand I come from a world where we’re very modest. But that’s not greedy. That’s nice, right?

Every President wants to do right.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Leadership is a choice, not a position.