The time is right to mix sentences with dirt and the sun with punctuation and rain with verbs.

Reduce intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself and listen to it.

There are not too many fables about man's misuse of sunflower seeds.

I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.

Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords.

It's strange how the simple things in life go on while we become more difficult.

Finding is losing something else. I think about, perhaps even mourn, what I lost to find this

I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me, so I lit a candle and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep.

I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.

Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream. I'm not, she said.

I’ll affect you slowly as if you were having a picnic in a dream. There will be no ants. It won’t rain.

The gravitas in a leader is like clarity in diamond.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It's part of my nature. I wouldn't be an actor if I wasn't.

For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we're dreaming all the time. That's what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls.

As far as career goes, make sure you're in it for the right reasons - and make sure that the work itself is the most important thing.

If you face just one opponent, and you doubt yourself, you're out-numbered

I am no longer content to be the scared, obedient schoolgirl. Who are you, a stranger, to tell me what I can and cannot do?

I am working here (in Amsterdam) on my last big triptych, which will be a tremendous story, and which gives me a more intense life and exhilaration. My God, life is worth living!

Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.

To me, no matter what we do, we all strive for that experience.