Man is afraid to attain what he longs for, just as subconsciously he longs for what he is afraid of.

I realised the amazing power of literature and of the human imagination generally: to make the dead live and to stop the living from dying.

The world is like an enormous set of scales. When evil begins to outweigh good, angels cram themselves in on the lighter side. You can't see them, but there they are, restoring the balance.

...there is little that comes so close to death as fulfilled love.

If we lose our memory, we lose ourselves. Forgetting is one of the symptoms of death. Without memory we cease to be human beings.

To destroy is easier than to create, and that is why so many people are ready to demonstrate against what they reject. But what would they say if one asked them what they wanted instead?

Justice was revenge wrapping itself in a cloak of high principle.

A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.

Graveyards remind us of the vanity of all human endeavour.

Animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them.

If you tell anything to a woman ... it's like putting it in the papers.

It is character that communicates most eloquently.

You know, my faith is one that admits some doubt.

You get dealt a hand and you play those cards the best you can.

I tend to play mostly villains and twisted people. Unsavory guys. I think it's my face, the way I look.

My will is to always be better and better and better. I've got the will to want to be the best.

The charges of building and making of gardens are unknowne.

The state and the church seldom approve of anything I do. I don't need their approval. I don't aspire to the heterosexual nuclear family model

I love cinema. It is the most important thing to me. Life is cinema. It has been this way since I was a child of about 14, and I was going every day to see the movies.

A bad man becomes worse when he apes a saint.

Men measure not only other men, but all other things, by themselves.