She felt like a baton getting passed along in a relay race, completely devoid of any control over her destiny.

Everybody was sorry. Sorry was easy. Sorry was for suckers.

Rule Number Two, Monsignor. Do not show pity.

Someone tells me I’ve been touched by Jesus, I remember.”“Not Jesus, ” he said in all seriousness. “The hand of God.

If you cannot forgive others, how can you forgive yourself?

The great musicians are those who can reach people, who can make people feel something.

I'm proudest of the fact that I've been able to make a few movies in the studio system that are slightly unorthodox and personal. But it's never quite as easy as you dream that it could be.

That youthful fervor, which is sometimes called enthusiasm, but which is a heat of imagination subsequently discovered to be inconsistent with the experience of actual life.

If good happens, good; if bad happens, good.

But really, Marilla, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?

Question: How much do you have to invest in the future before you've spent it and no longer have one?

Take Bach or Schubert: Their music was dedicated to God but filled and shaped their worldly lives. If you are a committed atheist, you lean back and miss all the richness of that history.

Wes Anderson grew up in Houston, and he and I talk about Manhattan in similar ways, as a kind of fantasy world.

It's not what you know anymore that counts, it's how fast you learn