You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don't want to live with them.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.

Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.

Remember, you are not aspiring for perfection, Bombshell. You are aspiring for progress, one step at a time.

The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour to the latest generation.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Having my animals or my children with me exorcises that feeling of not being wanted.

I lost touch with my son in terms of advice early on. Maybe it had to do with being gone so much, doing location films when he was at an age where he needed support and guidance.

Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.

Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.

I play any piano with a good tune.

Do not be intimidated by a smart person. It is easier to debate a smart person than to argue with an idiot.

Many areas of Los Angeles have gang problems.