The public wants work which flatters its illusions.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

The way children stretch time and the way adults forget that stretch could be one of the saddest differences in the world.

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.

If we have no inner peace, we deceive ourselves into thinking that comfort and prosperity will bring happiness.

I used to look like a deer in headlights on the red carpet. You step out of the car and it's bedlam. Everyone's got crazy eyes.

What you eat and drink is 50 percent of life.

God grows fragrant flowers of hope in the ashes of loss.

When someone asks about Boston, I put my brain on pause. I feel like I took a 5,000 pounds off my back to be here.

The Republicans just voted last year to end Medicare.

Some people are real, some people are good, some people are fake and some people are real good at being fake.