From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.

If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.

What fire does not destroy, it hardens

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world.

Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.

Progress not perfection... you can't be perfect everything... but you can gain progress on a daily basis.

If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.

Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right.' Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

You are all angels, you guys know that right?

Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.

The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.

In our lust for measurement, we frequently measure that which we can rather than that which we wish to measure... and forget that there is a difference.

Only when a woman shares male risks can she really begin to understand men.