A small boy puts his hand on the wall, and looks down intently as he wriggles his toes. The birth of thought?

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.

Which just goes to show, I guess, that dinner parties are like everything else - not as fragile as we think they are.

The path to success isn't measured in miles, it's measured in inches..

Physical experiences, lacking the joys of love, depend on twists and perversions of pleasure. Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.

I'm the messenger. I'm just really the messenger. Although I've been a very good messenger, let's face it, right? I've been a pretty good messenger.

I liked pretending to be other people: I could reinvent myself, reinvent my own reality.

Do not fear the ones who argue, but rather those who are evasive.

I really do just try to tune as much out as I can and make things that I think just sound good to me.

I think that parents only get so offended by television because they rely on it as a babysitter and the sole educator of their kids.

It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself ... both and one. A shadow on snow.

As far as the filmmaking process is concerned, stars are essentially worthless - and absolutely essential.