Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death.

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

Those who have money think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know it is money.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.

Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned.

The only test of work of literature is that it shall please other ages than its own.

It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

I get a little behind during Lent, but it comes out even at Christmas.

Oh, the ignorance of us upon whom Providence did not sufficiently smile to permit us to be born in New England.

The unhappiness of people is due to their ignorance of nature.

The reason I love my dog so much is because when I come home, he's the only one in the world who treats me like I'm the Beatles.

When I am told that I am a huge star, I accept it, knowing that success is relative - the films I do have to work.

… Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!

When television came in, everybody thought that was the end of the movie business, which was not and is not.

If it is a small rate raises, [there will be] no impact.

Fame is one thing, notoriety is another.

Filmmaking for me is always aiming for the imaginary movie and never achieving it.