“Men conceal the past scenes of their lives.”

Those vestiges of natures left behind Which reason cannot quite expel from us Are still so slight that naught prevents a man From living a life even worthy of the gods.

Nature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another’s death.

Things stand apart so far and differ, that What’s food for one is poison for another.

How many evils have flowed from religion.

How is it that the sky feeds the stars?

It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.

How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings.

True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

The old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.

The sum total of all sums total is eternal.

Only religion can lead to such evil.

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.

Epicurus whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun.

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.

For fools admire and love those things they see hidden in verses turned all upside down, and take for truth what sweetly strokes the ears and comes with sound of phrases fine imbued.

I always want another actor to shine in my scene because it makes the film stronger. I would encourage people to scene steal, because filmmaking is a collaborative effort.

I don’t get it when you get so much openness about the way movies are made, and the special effects and the behind-the-scenes stuff and all of that. I can’t help but feel like this reduces it a little bit.

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

I don’t personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.

Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.

It’s a little uncomfortable doing love scenes in armor, but, you know, when the heat’s on, the heat’s on.

A filmmaker doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand it. You don’t have to die to shoot a death scene.

I go by my instincts. It’s whatever I feel in the scene in the moment.