The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains...

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

We live on the leash of our senses. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.

where there is never sunshine darkness isn't a scary thing

Death is permanent. There’s no coming back if you get off the ferryman’s boat.

Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts.

Weigh risk carefully, and once you decide a risk is manageable and necessary in the pursuit of your dreams, take it.

I think we need a huge dose of love.

Women are not totally nauseous after seeing me.

I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water.

There's still a 1950s view of cinema, that there's one audience and they all want to see the same thing.

I knew someone had to take the first step. So I made up my mind not to move.

You do have to be fairly selfish when you have a gift. You cannot afford to let too many outside things get in the way.