until you learn that an artist cannot afford to scorn any phase of life that is human, you will never do great work.

creation, like vengeance, is God's. It is dangerous when man tampers with it.

The surest way of being considered eccentric is just to be yourself. So few of us have the nerve.

There's nothing so unreliable as figures, and everybody but a mathematician knows that. Figures lie right to your face.

I never think over my mistakes. I just live up to them.

The companionship of a secret is often corruptive to good habits, such as sleep and appetite.

Youth makes no compromise with life. It demands all, passionately; loses all, or wins, with anguish of spirit.

We are all capable of so much more than we think, the only thing we need to do is change our beliefs

If he wouldn't take charge of this, she would. "Take off your clothes.

I could feel the day offering itself to me, and I wanted nothing more than to be in the moment-but which moment? Not that one, or that one, or that one.

I don't like to drink alone 'cause there's nobody to fight with.

I'll tell you a little secret about the Blues: it's not enough to know which notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played.

Remember, what you continually talk about, comes about.

The more you’re writing absolutely honestly, and absolutely bare of intention - even if it feels absolutely personal and small because it’s at your own scale - other people relate to it much more.

A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.

I think if the extremists were happy with my films, I'd start to worry.

The American flag has not been planted on foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity's sake.