The nonsense that charms is close to sense.

Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.

When Medusa looks in the mirror, she sees the Lady of Sorrows.

My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.

Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth

The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path.

Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.

The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

The problem with love is this: It dies. And when it does, you die with it.

We have the universe to roam in in imagination. It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity.

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

What's the definition of a good flame? One you agree with.

What can realistically be done depends on the historical moment. The same is true with regard to the agents.

Read Euler, read Euler. He is the master of us all.

I still have pretty much the same fears I had as a kid. I'm not sure I'd want to give them up; a lot of these insecurities fuel the movies I make.

Hollywood is a bit of a publicity game where it's constantly trying to portray things and put up this image and I was not interested in that.

There are times ... when any visitor - in person, by phone, by mail - is an intruder, a burglar, a space hogger, an oxygen taker, a chaos maker, a conflict inducer, a mood chaser, and a total drag.