I like to write adventure stories; that's what I tell myself. But you can't help letting your own personality, your own experiences, slip through.

I'm not sure that Van Gogh got up in the morning and looked at the crows and the bizarre clouds and went damn that's a good painting, you know? No, he considered shooting himself, and one day he did.

We think literature is immortal, but even that decays and ultimately turns to dust.

Every invention eventually becomes obsolete.

I think the word is counter-productive. Capitalism is counter-productive to art, just as the Catholic Church was counter-productive to art four hundred years ago.

I was always totally convinced that three weeks after the revolution they'd put me up against the wall and shoot me.

You can't go home and listen to Chopin, and just use it.

I was exactly having fun. I was stone miserable, but I wasn't hating doing it; I was loving doing it, but it's just damaged and warped.

Your world is just as empty as your heart!

Do you believe that we have the ability to change destiny?

Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrat at the other, all would be well with the country.

Only good things come from God's hands. He never gives you more than you can bear. Every burden prepares you for eternity.

I like to play characters that are convincing, that aren't just straightforward and nice.

God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful and painful.

I think part of maturity is knowing who you are.

We have to use our discontentment to engage rather than disengage - our hope has to be more powerful than our cynicism.