We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

How inscrutable and incomprehensible are the hidden works of Nature!

Choice not chance determines your destiny [my family motto...credited to Aristotle]

You've got to believe in yourself, you've got to have a very clear vision, and you've got have the fire in the belly and go out and not be shy with working because it takes a lot of work.

The Polar Express began with the idea of a train standing alone in the woods. I asked myself, What if a boy gets on that train? Where does he go?

Never index your own book.

A first love always occupies a special place.

God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.

When women's parts are being written, they are more and more for under 30s who are nubile and beautiful. Actresses over 40 are finding very little happening.

Given the diverse raiment life sports, one never knows what the guises of the gods may be.

I'm of the opinion that if you step on stage and you're not a straight white male, you're automatically making a political statement whether you know it or not.