Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

In the aftermath, we are because they were.

You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf.

I read everyday, because reading takes me away, away to a place where nothing is impossible.

It's actually a rather romantic and dramatic story --- one I would eagerly tell you, except for the fact that I recently forgot it, based on it being far too long and having not enough decapitations.

Black men struggle with masculinity so much. The idea that we must always be strong really presses us all down - it keeps us from growing.

I think that people are entitled to be amused, and entertained. If they see deviations from this classical norm, it's probably good for their mental health.

But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.

I never liked dance photography; it's very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived.

Be flexible - the order in which you introduce the elements of a painting should not be a rigid system. What worked last time may not work this time.

Selfishness, eager for a heaven of enjoyment, is quite a different thing in the soul from love and purity and truth, yearning together for what is their natural element.