A strenuous soul hates cheap success. It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the defendant.
The future is the worst thing about the present.
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
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 will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports. . . . When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.
Some men see the world as it is and say 'Why?' I see the world as it could be and say, 'Why not?'
What interests me about genre is that the public connects immediately with it, it has certain rules, certain codes the audience recognizes. I can use that to create something very big.
Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.
Sometimes people think success comes over night. There is no such thing, anyone you ever see that is successful has worked at it and if they do it well and calculate it just right they will make it look easy. Life is no fun if you don't get a few bumps and bruises along the way.