Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.

The universal view melts things into a blur.

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.

Our first intuitions are the true ones.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

A church service starts and ends with a prayer. A magazine starts and ends with an advert.

As long as you're neurotic and crazy, he's great. But once he solves all your problems, he becomes the problem.

I'm into politics, and I love watching the heavier news magazine shows.

I never not wanted to become an actress.

It is a greater thing to be a good citizen than to be a good Republican or a good Democrat.

The order of the world is always right - such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin.

In general, I have some precise ideas about everything, because the film is completed in my head before we ever start shooting. With casting, I am always present, even for the smallest character.

Gold is the fool's curtain, which hides all his defects from the world.

Hey Rose, welcome back. You still breaking hearts?" "Are you volunteering?" His grin widened." Let's hang out sometime and find out. If you ever get parole.

I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock 'n' roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation.