There is scarcely any man sufficiently clever to appreciate all the evil he does.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

There is no gem like virtue, no wealth like happiness, no treasure like faith, and no jewel like love.

In times of trouble, people need artists. We create those spaces where their own pain and worry and sadness can rest, and where their broken hearts can hope again.

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

He doesn't teach you what to think, he teaches you how to think

Patroclus, he says, Patroclus. Patroclus. Over and over until it is sound only.

Nowadays, it's like two different arenas, recording and touring. When I started way back in the day, doing both was nothing, you didn't have to think about it, the road and recording.

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing.

I'm not as optimistic as Gene Roddenberry was. I fall somewhere in the middle. But as a romantic, I like to think things are going to get bigger rather than worse.

To be that big of a star and that grounded and that classy, I'm mean [ George Clooney] was a true mentor for me and, as a director, he's incredible.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.