The dearer a book was to my heart, the more battered and bruised it became.

Every great work of art ... is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life.

I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality.

Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent.

That, of course, is what great works of imagination do for us: They make us a little restless, destabilize us, question our preconceived notions and formulas.

I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.

You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist.

It is amazing how, when all possibilities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom.

The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream.

I eat my heart out alone.

I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.

Goodness, real goodness, has it's own sort of cruelty to it.

The crossroads of science and politics is a dodgy place.

Industry prospers when it offers people articles which they want more than they want anything they now have. The fact is that people never buy what they need. They buy what they want.

Myth is necessary because reality is so much larger than rationality...man is fundamentally mythic...His real health depends upon his knowing and living his metaphysical totality.

Hanging and marriage, you know, go by destiny.

Never to be cast away are the gifts of the gods, magnificent, which they give of their own will, no man could have them for wanting them.

My dream... was to be an eclectic knowledge-gathering person.

I think you have to be careful not to do too much as yourself. Otherwise you stop getting the acting roles, and at the end of the day that's what I love.

Alone, I am drunk on my thoughts; in company, I am sober again.

When you're young, the silliest notions seem the greatest achievements.