Once you base your whole life striving on a desperate lie, and try to implement that lie, you instrument your own undoing.

People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves

If everyone lives roughly the same lies about the same thing, there is no one to call them liars. They jointly establish their own sanity and themselves normal.

War is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies.

The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.

The artist takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art.

What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance.

Man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.

Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship.

Horror alone brings peace of mind.

Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.

Sometimes, it seemed, the business of a Witch or a Godmother was not so much using magic as knowing when not to use it.

If you made a better rat than a human, it’s not much to boast about, Peter.

There is one word that can change weakness into strength

He offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.

My dad's all I've ever had. When I was 3 and 4, my mom used to take me to bars. I understand why now - babysitters cost beer, beer and-a-half an hour.

Grief is not a disorder, a disease or sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.

In my case, when I am trying to be "kind" I often default in a sort of toothless loving-all stance that is, actually, not kind, because it is not truthful.

It's very difficult when there are pictures taken on the red carpet. I find those things so terrifying that another persona just kicks in. I don't recognise myself.

I have said all along that I would know when it would be time to step down, and now is that time.

I've always been a fighter. If you tell me I can't, I'll die trying to prove you wrong.