Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

My demo was terrible, I sounded like a chipmunk. I was so young.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Too many people measure how successful they are by how much money they make or the people that they associate with. In my opinion, true success should be measured by how happy you are.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

There is no unique picture of reality.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

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.

‚Kiss Land‘ is like a horror movie.

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.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.