Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

Can't even feel dissapointed when seeingheaven ain't as wonderful as ever expected.

The only ride I’m interested in is on you, cowboy, but I’m sure all the women say that.

Moderation is the key to lasting enjoyment.

Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

Everything big-budget or stereotypical I was offered after 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a huge no-no.

Truth is not always a pleasant thing.

Never buy hardcover books. They are designed to sell to those who don't actually read. Along with books, many other things can be read: natural scenery, love, officialdom, business¡­

Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration.

Paris Hilton said something interesting to me once: she said, 'I just tell everyone what they want to hear, and I do what I want to do.'