It's bad if we are controlled, but if we're not, it can be even worse.

What if the way we perceive a problem is already part of the problem?

Words are never 'only words'; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.

If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.

The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on.

I already am eating from the trash can all the time. The name of this trash can is ideology. The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating.

We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.

Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

Atheism is not the denial of the existence of God, but having doubts as to whether God is conscious.

Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions.

The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire.

Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.

Time eateth all things, could old poets say, The times are chang'd, our times drink all away.

In Hollywood, I'm lucky, I only do big movies like 'Blade.' It's much more comfortable: you have a trailer.

I think that the existence of Beethoven is remarkable, but I do not bristle at the suggestion that this event had a low probability given the initial state of the universe.

Why had he never appreciated the miracle that he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart?

I've been blessed in my career to be able to do studio and independent films.

Philosophy still moves too much straight ahead, and is not yet cyclical enough.

I'm a guy who is married to an actress, who has three children, and lives in Tribeca. Where do you draw the line on what I am allowed to discuss?

There's never been a parent in my life.

I’m not going to leave you here to bleed my friend dry.” “If that had been my intent, they’d already be dead on the floor.