A certain strangeness, something of the blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works of art: that they shall excite or surprise us is indispensable.

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world.

To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action.

Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.

Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us.

The way to perfection is through a series of disgusts

To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.

Do not delay your happiness, be glad in the moment.

The right faith gives you power to live with questions you have no answers for.

You can never control the main outcomes of your life without controlling your mental attitude.

By the time I was in sixth grade I could bound every country in the world from memory.

Maybe every two films you need to do documentary to tell what you really want to tell and not be limited by the medium. With documentary you don't create the reality you have to hunt the reality.

Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.

A man is nothing but breath and shadow.

If we could believe that Jesus...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter.

Each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent.

Lord, how tired one gets of one's own writing.