Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders.

It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

Depression is anger slowed down; panic is grief speeded up.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

Writing is a hellish task, best snuck up on, whacked on the head, robbed and left for dead.

Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice.

They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.

Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.

Great leaders inspire greatness in others.

But I am a patient man. I can wait for hours in the rain.

Make a virtue of necessity.

The one of us who lies the best will get the better of the bargain. It's a game. A very exciting game that's played all over the world. Good players got rich, and bad players don't.

From the American retelling of Romeo and Juliet in West Side Story to the Japanese adaptation of King Lear in Ran, Shakespeare's cultural influence is virtually limitless.

I had a dream about building a house on a dock, composed from 100 triangles. You'd have to sail from room to room. And maybe the entrance would be the mouth of a whale.

The truth of truths is love.

Good people aren't good because they never cause harm to others. They're good because they treat others the best way they know how, with the understanding that they have.

On the red carpet, I saw all these great stories, and I also got to see the plastic surgery up close.