How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.

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.

Some people drink deeply from the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.

The greater the pain, the greater the fun.

Feelings are involuntary reactions, so God does not say, "Feel joy." He says, "Rejoice!" It's a choice.

It's multifaceted, the message to our music. It's not just that. It's about individuality, development of self, finding things in life that you can be passionate about.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

I would only make a movie that I believe in. If I didn't believe in it, it would be unworthy.

Fast Food Nation was boring and aimed at yuppies, and yuppies don't eat fast food.

Our health care is rationed by wealth.

When you most feel like giving up is when you most need to be keeping on.

I think I already understand about life: pretty good, some problems.