I always like the idea of doing interviews with somebody but completely seriously not ever mentioning what that person is generally known for.

We are unusual and tragic and alive.

I met a lot of great people in Saudi Arabia and I'd like to see them again. And I'd love to spend more time in the desert and in the mountains. I felt really at home there.

Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.

We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?

Here I am Rock You Like a Hurricane.

Again the greatest use of a human was to be useful. Not to consume, not to watch, but to do something for someone else that improved their life, even for a few minutes.

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

Pain comes at me and I take it, chew it for a few minutes, and spit it back out. It's just not my thing anymore.

That’s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other.

If you believe, it shall be.

It wasn't that I stopped caring about life, but that I've stopped being able to care.

It's way too easy to get used to losing, it does something small to you.

Belief in oneself is required for healing.

I learned a lot about critics, not to really take them too seriously about movies.

I didn't go to high school, and I didn't go to grade school either. Education, I think, is for refinement and is probably a liability.

You know, when real trouble comes your humanity is awakened. The fundamental human experience is that of compassion.

There was a subtlety about Peggy Lee. It was powerful. There was a valuable use of space. Everything was not cluttered. Her voice was out front and was the key instrument.

With cropping, a new integrity appears and winning abstractions flutter up like butterflies. You can afford to be critical, discriminating, innocent, open-minded, charmed, beguiled or bamboozled.