He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.

Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.

What business does memory have with time?

He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.

We live in a world of banal miracles.

He found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.

Two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.

Always speak first to the toughest person in the room.

The movie I was working on, "Cleopatra", it's about how destructive a force love can be. But maybe that's what every story is about.

And while his mother's lecture had gone over his seven-year-old head, Pasquale saw now what she meant--how much easier life would be if our intentions and our desires could always be aligned.

I guess I forgot we were going out tonight.""We always go out on Fridays.""It's Thursday, Alvis.""You are so tied to routine.

We love the things we love for what they are.

Introspect.You know yourself more each day, Yet, you find out how little you know yourself too.

Be great in all you do.

Prosperity is apt to prevent us from examining our conduct; but adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is beneficial to us.

I haven't spent my entire career playing the guy in the bad hat, although I have to say that the bad guy is frequently much more interesting than the good guy.

I never thought I was going to be a singer. That was an accident.

Great loves were almost always great tragedies. Perhaps it was because love was never truly great until the element of sacrifice entered into it.

[Scottish songs] are, I own, frequently wild, & unreduceable to the more modern rules; but on that very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect.

All my life there's always been an ex-wife or a girlfriend.

What very often happens when people make films about rich people, the camera is quite mesmerised by the opulence and quite theatrical in fact.