If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

I tend to get bored quickly, which means I must be boring.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

Our experience of any painting is always the latest line in a long conversation we’ve been having with painting. There’s no way of looking at art as though you hadn’t seen art before.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

I have trouble with letting go. That’s my problem.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Be the hunter, not the hunted.

There’s a reason that I have confidence out there, and it’s about how I prepare for games and for series and seasons and whatnot, so we’ve got to stick with that kind of thought process.

Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

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.

Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I’m quite shy.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

I mean Facebook is no longer a company, it’s a country. 2 billion users. It can influence what we think, what we believe, how we vote, what we buy, even how we feel.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

Seeing myself on the screen makes me cringe. I understand that I am that way – pouty.

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

When I did ‚Bird,‘ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

Be as you wish to seem.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

No one but a fool is always right.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.