Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk, but he hates to stand alone in his opinions.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

The Government are very keen on amassing statistics - they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams.

The minute anyone's getting anxious I say, You must eat and you must sleep. They're the two vital elements for a healthy life.

Writing in a nuanced way, getting at all the details in a way that remains interesting for the reader, is very difficult.

When you walk to the end of a fiction, its procedure is 1) intuitive; and 2) emotional. Its intelligence is emotional, I think.

To me, John Lennon and Elvis Presley were punks, because they made music that evoked those emotions in people.

LA is an intense city. I was probably a bit too sensitive. I didn't have any friends so I was keeping pretty low key. I just whipped myself up into a bit of an emotional frenzy.

maybe when you look at your face 50 times its really not that interesting anymore

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.