What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

How many artists have created while drunk, high on laudanum, opium, chloral or amphetamines? What have antidepressants ever done for culture?

Every man is a hypocrite

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.

The Highlander was a documentary, and events happened in real time.

It is better to advise than upbraid, for the one corrects the erring; the other only convicts them.

Peacekeeping works in some situations, but it very often needs other ingredients. Peacekeeping is not the aspirin of international security.

There are lots of good directors I would like to work with; I want to be inspired and challenged by them.

At an early age I told myself I would never quit skating, I would never quit riding BMX and being a motorcycle junkie. I just can't stop doing those things.

A stylist might say you look amazing in anything. Your family will always tell you if you look a complete idiot.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.