Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar.

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.

The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.

If you were to ask me if I'd ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I'd have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

Mystery is the essential element of every work of art.

The Cinema seems to have been invented to express the life of the subconscious, the roots of which penetrate poetry so deeply

I would give my life for a man who is looking for the truth. But I would gladly kill a man who thinks that he has found the truth.

Thank God I'm an atheist.

I can't help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest.

Thank God, I am still an atheist.

If someone were to tell me I had twenty years left, and ask me how I'd like to spend them, I'd reply 'Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.'

...the power of grace can work great things in the human person, greater than we might have dared to hope...(pg.52 in The Examen Prayer).

Unless you learn how to love yourself first, you will not be able to truly love anyone else

I felt a lot of ambivalence about going back to graduate school for a second MFA. The impulse was really the opposite from what it had been more than a decade before: I wanted to interrupt a career.

God is so great that He communicates greatness to the least thing that is done for His service.

My next goal is to be number one in the world.

Corporations cook very differently from how people do.

The furnace of affliction refines us from earthly drossiness, and softens us for the impression of God's own stamp.

I wanted to be a fifth grade teacher because my teacher was so important to me and was giving me the education that was going to take me through life and through this world.

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.

Love is a learned behavior. If you don't learn how to love yourself someone will teach you how to hate yourself.