I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians.

Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

Death was for-the other people.

When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself.

The dead are the past and we cannot escape the past. Without the past there will be no future.

My health and my family are the core of my being.

Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.

I would like to do a movie where the moments could be extended and you could have the freedom of that, but I'm not precious, if it moves the story and doesn't take away from it.

Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life.

Clint Eastwood's a good friend, too - he and I used to play in softball games together.

People ask what my goal is. I don't have a goal.

Elevated locations imply elevated purposes, even in American cities departing as radically as Los Angeles does from the traditional planning patterns of the Eastern Seaboard.