Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

The universal view melts things into a blur.

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.

Do I look like someone who has something to do here on earth?' —That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.

Our first intuitions are the true ones.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

Angels need an assumed body, not for themselves, but on our account.

Leading up to Christmas, there was talk of Santa. But I’d never even heard of Santa. Bunty, one of the workers who I grew to love, tried to explain, ‘He brings little angels like you, presents.

When you're a single parent, you're often lonely, yet seldom alone. There is no backup ... It is mothering without a net.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam.

We do not benefit from a relationship with China or any other country in which we put our values and our ideals aside.

The errors of the intellect are fatal, still more dangerous than those of the heart.

The one good thing is that I get a lot more good scripts coming through my letterbox. 'Vera Drake' raised my profile in one way, and then 'Harry Potter' in another.

Whenever there is discussion, I make it clear that I do not want any grey zones, just black and white.