If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

She admired her passion, knowing that passion is by definition excessive.

Everyone is wrong about the future.

If I were a doctor, I would diagnose his condition thus: "The patient is suffering from nostalgic insufficiency.

an old villa surrounded by a garden looked to them like the image of a comforting home, the dream of an idyll long past.

It was the incommunicable scent of this country, its intangible essence, that she had brought along with her to France.

Eventually we come to know and understand a lot of things, but it's too late, because a whole life has already been determined at a stage when we didn't know a thing.

We encounter regression to the mean almost every day of our lives. We should try to anticipate it, recognize it, and not be fooled by it.

In my flowery dreams there's always you. I do not regret it one bit.

You can take the babushka off the Jewish mother and dress her up in a pair of Seven jeans and Marc Jacobs sling-backs, but she's still going to expect a passel of grandkids.

He did not need a long life for us to measure. It was, rather, we who needed his life to be longer.

Man as a pure animal does not exist

Usually, a Range Rover would be beaten away from the lights by a diesel powered wheelbarrow.

To disappear your complete self into a character is quite difficult. I've tried it 85 times, and I've succeeded two or three times.

I'm a self-made man. Who else would help?

Horror movies are always a solid dollar. But a movie about Groucho Marx is a gamble. These things just are. Doesn't matter who you are.

Islam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-Jahiliyya [separated from God].