“The brain may take advice, but not the heart.”

The better the actor, the more stupid he is.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.

Imagination, of course, can open any door – turn the key and let terror walk right in.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.

It’s a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

The quietness of his tone italicized the malice of his reply.

I can see every monster as they come in.

Reading dreams. That’s what started her walking down the road. Every day she’d walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.

Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.

Are the dead as lonesome as the living?

There is nobody in the world that you can’t get if you really concentrate on it, if you really want them. You’ve got to want it to the exclusion of everything else.

You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.

A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.

Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.

Lots of people will give you advice and depending upon how well they know you, the advice might be valid or not so valid.

Sometimes I think God is trying to test me, both now and in the future. I’ll have to become a good person on my own, without anyone to serve as a model or advise me, but it’ll make me stronger in the end.

The last thing my father told me was: ‘On your way up, take me up. On your way down, don’t let me down.’ A father telling his son that puts some responsibility on my shoulders. He told me that, and I take it very seriously.

You have to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing.

Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated.

The best advice about getting older? Just be thankful you’re not dead!

Wait. Look. Notice. If you keep those three words in mind, you just might survive the next few days.