Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

If you like or dislike something about them, Say it to their face.

Pity and friendship are two passions incompatible with each other.

We need to teach empathy as we do literacy.

In 1973, women got 59 cents on the dollar; now we are getting 74 cents on the dollar. In the area of finance and business, we are at 68 cents on the dollar.

Men are like bulls. They cannot resist the red sole.

Confidence is key. Always. Even when we might have messed up.

I am passionate about informing the world about our ocean - its complexity and beauty, its value to us, and the perils that it faces.

I am often asked which of my films has come closest to my own ideal of performance, and I always answer, 'Educating Rita.'

It is to the interest of the commonwealth of mankind that there should be someone who is unconquered, someone against whom fortune has no power.

Although always prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it should be postponed.