Mountains had taken the place of religion, had satisfied her religious sense, her need for adoration and worship as no service in any Cathedral, however sublime, had been able to do.

The full life depends, not on the range of experience but on the intensity of the interest, the emotion involved, and on its being a personal interest.

I do disapprove of the modern attitude that you can't do the simplest thing, like dying or being born, in your own house.

we should be careful not to let machinery swamp life. That we should be sure, when we are confronted with a fresh mechanical contrivance, that we are not losing more than we gain by adopting it.

advertising confuses values ... By appealing either to fear, or to vanity, or to covetousness, it very skillfully insinuates false values.

As soon as you start asking what education is for, what the use of it is, you're abandoning the basic assumption of any true culture, that education is worth while for its own sake.

do get over the idea that size has any value or merit. It is the enemy of most of the best things in the world - it is the enemy of the good life.

the essence of vulgarity seemed to lie in the pretence at being or the attempt to be, something that one really was not, with the resulting lack of ease and dignity and taste.

Advertising ... is a parasitic activity; it forces goods for which there is no real need or demand on a foolish or even a reluctant public, always by appealing to their lower instincts.

What I find most injurious to mankind in modern advertising is the constant appeal to material standards and values, the elevating of material things into an end in themselves, a virtue.

Kyoko sniffs, unable to speak. Sometimes saying nothing means most of all.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

Honestly, I just like to make movies. The funnier the better.

The safest way to ensure diversity of opinion is diverse ownership. But this ideal has been sacrificed by our government.

Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea.

I'm usually very attracted to things that I can't define. If something's too clear, it's very often not inspiring to me anymore.

I had no desire to become a singer until I heard Billie Holiday. The first time I heard her on a record, it was a revelation. She sounded like a woman singing about herself.

Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities.

Does the customer invent new product or service? The customer generates nothing. No customer asked for electric lights. There was gas and gas mantles, which gave good light.

This very individualistic form of Protestant Christianity that became so basic in English and then American life is to a large degree responsible for the historical success of Britain and America.