The nature of happiness is such that happiness retreats the more intensely you pursue it.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

Why wait for your happiness to come from your future blessings, when this moment already has all you need to live happily?

If you are indecisive, make decisions quickly and act in accordance with your decisions you will be able to acquire a new habit

In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.

History is various and sinuous and no essential part of the human spirit is ever wholly absent from it.

The future economic success of Silicon Valley will be contingent on whether we have a good quality of life. World-class workers will only want to come to a world-class living environment.

Well, it was just, the bars was all just like the bamboo roofs and everything. You know. As I say, to me, it's completely spoiled all, all these places now. Make them all just tourist traps.

I much prefer being in the studio or on stage and staying out of the mainstream really.

All anger feels like righteous anger; sorrow does not care whether it is righteous or not.

To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

For me it comes down to one thing: I'm trying to follow my own nature.