A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!

We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?

No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.

Start every morning by drinking a cup of love, and you will enjoy the day and love everyone.

Just take my hand &let us dance under a chandelier of starlight.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit

Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.

The old need the company of the young so that they renew their contact with life.

If you ever heard that old saying, where there's smoke there's fire; well that's a load of bull.

We are all part of a tradition, at least we depend on the past.

I've always said that I'm open to changes in the relations between Cuba and the U.S., but that Cuba must make changes also.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what's next and where things are going. If you're not asking those questions, you're not growing.