The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none left over for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment.

The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.

We have now educated ourselves into a state of complete imbecility.

What will finally destroy us is not communism or fascism, but man acting like God.

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.

God, stay with me, let no word cross my lips that is not your word, no thoughts enter my mind that are not your thoughts, no deed ever be done or entertained by me that is not your deed.

People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.

In the beginning was the Lie and the Lie was made news and dwelt among us, graceless and false.

I have absolutely no doubt that there is an intense anti-Americanism in all Western Europe, and I think the reason for that is a very, very simple one.

The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.

In the deregulated realm of US banking and finance, crime does occasionally pay for its foul deeds, not in prison time but by making modest rebates to the victims.

L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me.

My father died in 1930, but if you told him or anybody almost in that time that you'd be able to sit back in England and watch a cricket game in Australia, they'd have you put in the loony bin.

In relative youth, we assume we'll remember everything. Someone should urge the young to think otherwise.

Monuments may be builded to express the affection or pride of friends, or to display their wealth, but they are only valuable for the characters which they perpetuate.

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.

So few people know what they're capable of.

To an art historian a Giotto is a 14th Century painting. To an artist it was painted yesterday. We free ourselves from the past when we see it freshly.