You can never make someone punctual who is not, or quick who is slow, or lively who wants to plod on carefully. I have learnt that every fault is an exaggerated quality, nothing else.

Friendship based solely upon gratitude is like a photograph; with time it fades.

Never can a room look comfortable without books ... Books ought to be scattered all over the house, even in the passages, in the bedroom, les livres du chevet, everywhere.

My greatest wish is to write in such a manner that all may think they have written it themselves.

Those who look for reasons to hate miss opportunities to love.

I am quite above physical death and believe it to be only the birth throes for a much purer life in a much purer draping.

[Written in 1901:] Nothing has been so deplorable for countries as centralization. I am afraid when I see Germany grow so powerful, and centralizing in Berlin; it is the beginning of the end!

One doesn't know one's self what grain one sows, that works on and on, through one and through many lives, transmitted from heart to heart and from lips to lips.

Perhaps trust had to be accompanied by a measure of common sense, and a hefty dose of realism about human nature. But that would need a lot of thinking about, and the tea break did not go on forever.

Good health and good sense are two of life's greatest blessings.

In spite of how things may appear to us, we are never trapped by where we are. The trap is always who we are

Sing because this is a food our starving world needs. Laugh because that is the purest sound.

What happened to your tan?"--Fang "It was dirt." --Max

Most scripts are bad. I read a lot of them.

You learn after you've been in the business for a while that it's not getting your face recognized that's the payoff. It's having your film remembered.

Whenever you feel down, always remember that Almighty Allah has better plans for you.

Never cosign a loan. Once you have cosigned, you cannot get out of it - even on your deathbed.

Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.