Love always has its price, come whence it may.

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.

Of all the passions, the only one that seems respectable to me is the passion for food

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.

If your motive is in any way to promote greatness for yourself, you're in the wrong calling.

It's kind of hard to rally around a math class.

I attempt to write a good novel. Whether it is literature or not is something that will be decided by the ages, not by me and not by a pack of critics around the globe.

When HOLINESS loses its sweetness it is a fierce thing to come in contact with.

The slave trade was globalism. Why people insist that globalism, after its hideous history, is a good thing, I do not know.

For music, I always just played music myself - and, I had rock bands and wrote songs and put bands together that were loud, but not especially good. That was sort of the place music had in my career.

I like to do things for my wife on Valentine's Day. I open the door for her when she puts laundry in the washing machine.

The one thing that's closest to my story is the thing about trying out for the juvenile delinquent role and getting it. That was the start of my acting career... which I've resumed, by the way.

Every single day, I get up and I say, I am going to live and not die.