"A cigar," said the altruist, "a cigar, my good man, I cannot give you. But any time you need a light, just come around; mine is always lit."

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

When people fall in love, they burst into flames.

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

It has been said that I make chick flicks. This is not a compliment.

No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don't look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.

I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that.

It is not for us . . . to send out missionaries to foreign peoples; it is our task to build up our own Western culture.

Some like them fat, some like them tall, some like them short, skinny legs and all. I like them all.

If we weep for all the deaths in our country, the tears in our eyes would never dry.

When you get into the edit you'll understand what making a film is. You'll see all the things you missed and all the possibilities you have from what you shot.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.