Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine. To question The Obvious and the given is an essential element of the maxim 'de omnius dubitandum' [All is to be doubted].

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book.

The forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.

Thus in order to be a "radical" one must be open to the possibility that one's own core assumptions are misconceived.

When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry, ' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

There is no grief which time does not lessen and soften.

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it

Working outdoors or from life puts you in direct contact with the life force, not just the light and the landscape, but also the vitality of the world around you.

Yea, though the breath of disappointment should chill the sanguine heart, Speedily gloweth it again, warmed by the live embers of hope.

I need not add that freedom is a dangerous thing. But it is hardly possible that we are all cowards.

Go to lots of interviews, at least one a month even when you don't need a job, to keep in training for when you do.

One thinking it is right to speak all things, whether the word is fit for speech or unutterable.

Perfume must not be linked just to fashion because that means that one day it will go out of style.

I spend a lot of time talking to young and emerging producers on Twitter, feeding back thoughts and encouraging them.